


You Must Remember This

by Agent_Phyllis



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Emotional awakening, F/M, Finn deals with shit, M/M, Mentions of Combat fatigue, Multi, Non-Explicit, Other, Slow Burn, future stormpilot, mentions of PTDS, non binary genders, non explicit sexual awakening
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-05-16 16:26:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5832529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agent_Phyllis/pseuds/Agent_Phyllis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>FN-2187 becomes Finn, but what does it mean to not be a Stormtrooper? Finn feels lost in his new life and can't even be sure he truly knows who he is outside of the First Order, he struggles to understand how things work and sets out finding more about everything he was cut off from, including; love, friendship, choice and being an individual.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fan fiction in over ten years. Apologies for any changes in tense that make no sense or spelling errors - I do try and catch them but unfortunately I have moderate dyslexia and don't always seem mistakes.   
> This story is now the longest thing I have ever written, including my dissertation.

Within the ranks of the First Order you’d be hard pressed to find simple, ordinary physical interaction. Officers, Captains and Generals alike could go days and even weeks without an instance of incidental touch happening; no shoulders brushing in hall ways, no casual hand placed on an arm when greeting a friend. People consciously kept their distance for each other. And friendship was an unknown concept, what was a friend but someone you’ve given better opportunities to stab you in the back?  
And love? Those tender feelings one gets that makes you feel fizzing warmth flood your body and soul? That was not only absent within the First Order, it was practically outlawed.  
But for the Officers and the Generals and the Captains a handshake in greeting or tactical grasp of hand on shoulder wasn’t too much of a rare occurrence, uncommon yes but not rare. And, for those that were inclined to, there was sex and physical pleasure to be found. Either to sate one’s own needs or to play power games and gain favours. 

 

It was different for the Stormtoopers who spent the majority of their time cocooned in armour so even if someone were to touch them they would feel nothing, no gentle brush of skin contact or warmth from another body. The armour was designed to obscure all but the most forceful of hits to the body. A Stormtrooper’s life was one cut off from the world; they were not individuals, they were nothing more than drones - there to follow orders and to be treated as such.

A `trooper would wake at their designated time surrounded by the other members of their garrison, would leave their bunk and wash surrounded by others, would immediately dress in their body suit and armour whilst surrounded by others, would put on their helmet and march to the mess hall surrounded by others. Said helmet would only be removed at the given order and when it was off a `trooper’s eyes would never fully settle on the face of anyone else. You didn’t need to make eye contact to be given an order, you didn’t need to know the face of the `trooper who sits across from you at meal times.  
They would be by the side of at least one other person from their shift rotation at all times, rarely and only in exceptional circumstances would a `trooper be alone. Privacy was not a luxury the First Order afforded to the troops, why would you need time alone when you were an anonymous, nameless pawn? Why give hundreds of thousands of brainwashed cannon fodder, conditioned to act without thinking and follow without questioning, the privilege of a private moment? You wouldn’t give a droid a space to call their own, so why give one to a Stormtrooper.

They were born and raised by the First Order, told that came from nowhere and had no one other than the Order and no one questioned that. Stormtroopers had no origins and they had been told for as long as their memories served that they were all the same – none of them an individual, all of them built to serve and to follow and to die for the First Order. So isolated where they from each other that the ones like FN-2187, who had the vaguest of memories of a life with people who may have loved him, that they never voiced the fleeting thoughts that said “But how can the First Order be all that I have when I still dream of being torn from my family’s arms? Are these memories real or am I defective?”  
The thought wouldn’t even occur for them to turn the person sat beside them in the mess hall and start a simple conversation, let alone divulge a dark secret that could get them shot for treason. 

 

***

 

When his fellow Stormtrooper fell in front of him, dead within moments of disembarking on the unit’s first `boots on the ground’ mission, FN-2187 was hit with two realisations: the first, he didn’t know the face of the person who had just lost their life and the second was that their dying, bloodied body was the first time he had ever held someone in his arms. The `trooper could even swear that he felt the moment his comrade’s heart beast its last.  
As a smear of blood obscured the left side of his vision, FN-2187 felt himself become awash with panic - was this how the rebels and the civilians felt when they saw their own fall dead at their feet? How could anyone live like this?

 

Sweat began to prickle at his skin and suddenly FN-2187’s armour became less an autonomous barrier against weapons and more a claustrophobic chamber that, despite the breathing regulator, made him feel as if he couldn’t get enough air. He swallowed down the rising bile in his throat as suddenly his awareness training kicked in over drive; he became hyper vigilant of every movement around him, every time a blaster was fired, every time someone screamed in pain and each body that dropped to the ground – be they trooper or villager. He felt that strange tug of loss inside of him every time a life was snuffed out even if he didn’t see it; it was a cold and terrifying sensation, one he had never felt before but was threatening to overwhelm him. Time swirled and slowed, it felt like he was moving through thick viscous fluid whilst thoughts (not all of them his own, he was sure of it) raced around his head faster than ever.

He couldn’t think, couldn’t follow orders. FN-2187’s hands and body shook with tremors, his fingers unable to pull the trigger of his blaster despite the cool, emotionless command to do so scrolled across his visor screen whilst a bored sounding Officer stationed aboard their landing ship called out the location of fleeing targets. He had never failed to follow an order before, had only been given the most mandatory reconditioning treatments over his life time. Although some doubts about his own past had crept into his mind once in a while he had never even considered that the Order and what they did was wrong. 

 

The villagers were no longer fleeing, a lot of them were dead and FN-2187 swore that all the lifeless eyes were staring up at him. The blaster fire had stopped but his agitation and confusion had yet to abate, his heart was still going like a piston and the sweat was rolling down his face and trickling uncomfortably down his spine. The Stormtroopers were given the order to execute the remaining villagers and closed rank around them, blasters ready to fire once more.   
With his finger on the trigger FN-2187 felt like something inside of him was tearing apart, his stomach was now cramping violently and bile was burning its way up his throat. The muscles in his arm were screaming with the need to pull the trigger and follow the order but thoughts that felt like they were coming from the very back of his head were screaming louder, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it! DON’T DO IT!” and “RESIST! This can’t be right!” Vague, soundless visions flittered briefly behind his eyes. Things that could have been memories of a home thrown into disarray, blood pooling on the floor around him and a looming white mask pulling him from cold, limp arms.   
FN-2187 loosened his grip on the blaster and lowered it to his side without firing. Feeling eyes on him, he turned and found himself staring directly at Kylo Ren across the clearing between them. The polished parts of his superior’s mask caught and reflected the flickering flames around them but gave no indication to the `trooper if he was under Kylo Ren’s scrutiny or that he was merely observing the whole scene before him. Although the `trooper was barely conscious of it he felt a flutter in his mind, something that he didn’t think came from himself, but if he were to describe it would say it was almost as if another person were casting their eye over his thoughts and feeling him out. This passed within a second or two and the `trooper was left feeling as though he had somehow been given a command to follow, and a push to not question and simply do. Nether the less confusion and panic began to transform into dread and foreboding, which sat cold and heavy in FN-2187’s stomach, as the dark and powerful man turned slowly away from him.

 

No comments were made to the `trooper as he boarded their landing craft and headed back to the main ship but FN-2187 definitely got the impression that he was under observation from the uniformed Officers on board. The hazy minded feeling he experienced on the planet started to leave him but the panic still curled uncomfortably in his stomach and chest. Whilst time had seemed to slow to a crawl during the fire fight it all snapped back to reality with crashing force when he overheard mentions of a full cycle of reconditioning.  
FN-2187 tried to rationalise it as he walked down the corridors alone, hardly even registering the fact that he’d split from his unit, or even that he’d removed his helmet without being given the order to do so. Maybe they had been talking about the captured rebel criminal? Maybe they would send that man to reconditioning in order to save him from disease that was the Resistance?  
When Captain Phasma confronted him about having removed his helmet and gave the order to hand over his blaster for inspection FN-2187 knew he was heading towards the dreaded fate of reconditioning or, even worse, he was going to be `decommissioned`. He had disobeyed multiple orders, he had acted out by being alone and removing his helmet without permission. His vitals were probably being scrutinised at the very moment and they would see the chaos his body had been going through since he’d felt the death of his comrade.   
He was a defective Stormtrooper and the First Order had no place for malfunctioning equipment, FN-2187 had seen it happen before as a youth soldier when one of his unit had screamed with night terrors during each rest cycle and began to refuse orders.   
The young woman had been confronted by a Commanding Officer in their dorm, was told to report for intensive reconditioning and promptly refused to go. The Commanding Officer reached out to her, wrapping their gloved hand in her close cropped hair before yanking violently down and bringing the girl to her knees.

“Pay attention! This is the price of failure, this is the price of disobedience to the Order. If you do not comply, if you become too broken to be useful, you will be decommissioned. To be useful to the Order is to be part of their glory! The Order is the salvation of the galaxy. You would all do well to remember this” The Commanding Officer’s voice reverberated through the dormitory, filling them with both terror and pride, fearful of failing but jubilated to be one of the cogs in the perfect machine that was the First Order. The Officer’s eyes had yet to stray from the face of the mewling girl at his feet, without saying a further word he turned from her and walked out into the corridor dragging the disgraced youth soldier behind him by her hair. FN-2187 could not recall ever seeing her again and at the next rest cycle there was a different designation on the bunk and a different body sleeping in it.

Decommissioned, FN-2187 was malfunctioning and no longer useful and he was going to be decommissioned.

He needed to escape. He needed to heed the whispers in his mind, in his soul, that told him to get as far away from the First Order as possible. He needed to get away from the mindless violence and mind-numbing anonymity.

 

He needed to get out.

 

He needed a pilot.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After waking up in an unknown and unfamiliar medi-bay Finn struggles to put the pieces of what happened back together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is still not beta read, please feel free to point out things like random changes of tenses (which I do when I’m not paying attention) – I’ve been dipping in and out of this fic since I posted the first chapter so has been very sporadically written. If a serious beta reader would like to help out please let me know.  
> I’ve used some my own experiences of waking up from general anaesthetic (which I’ve had on three separate occasions… joy) and the eyelash thing happened to me the very first time I woke up and it was actually horrible. Also, over use of `He` instead of Finn in the first part of this fic that was done so for plot type-y reasons.
> 
> Little warning, I have suffered from PTSD after a bad car accident and used my own memories of the accident and how my own flashbacks felt to write some of how Finn feels. So some of his reactions may not fit the PTSD model to a clinical T.  
> This is now set after the events of The Force Awakens.

Chapter two

The first time he woke up, or more accurately the first time he recalled waking up, was an unpleasant shock as his body and senses came back on line. The first thing was suddenly being aware of the deep blackness surrounding him whilst his body simultaneously reported the various pains he was experiencing. The pain and darkness came at him like the flipping of a switch, all at once and at its most extreme levels, it was as if he had blinked into being with no previous thoughts or feelings. The darkness was not like having your eyes closed, where lights and shapes could wiggle and flash behind your eyelids; it was the muted, all-encompassing black you experienced when surrounded by a part of space devoid of planets, stars or any kind of life and light.

He thinks he made some noises, maybe cried out or groaned, but he was still too overwhelmed by the force of so suddenly becoming aware, that a bantha herd could have come stampeding around him and not been noticed. Although it wasn’t too long before sound began to ebb back into his consciousness, closely followed by sensations other than pain. There were mechanical sounds somewhere to his left and the distorted murmur of muted conversations.  
It must have been less than a second or so since he became conscious but the swirling of black, pain and sound disorientated his thoughts and sense of time. The moment stretched on, eternal and everlasting, as his mind tried to grasp at what was happening while struggling to recall the simplest thing, such as his name or where he was. 

Some of the absolute darkness receded and he finally felt like he was in his body and becoming more and more awake, his eyelids twitched and it was a conscious effort to try and open them – it seemed easier to concentrate on his fingers and toes, feeling had returned all over and he slowly worked on twitching and wiggling them, as if to check they were all still there. The pain was now focused across his whole back, right shoulder and right eyeball, he automatically tried to catalogue what was happening in the different areas of his body as if some ingrained command had him performing a systems check on himself:

Hands/feet: Wiggles and twitches gave him a good idea that there was nothing too wrong, although there was a vague lack of feeling along one side of his left hand and leg.  
Arms/legs: He tried to tense and flex various muscles without actually moving his appendages but stopped when nausea inducing pain lanced through his upper arm and into his shoulder, feeding the searing pain in his back and turning the flame into an inferno.  
Chest: He drew in a long, slow breath through his nose, although there didn’t seem to be any issue with his lungs themselves he found that filling them too much brought back the sharp pain in his shoulder and made his chest feel disturbingly tight.  
Neck/shoulders/back: Based on the pain he’d already experienced he wasn’t even going to attempt moving those areas. Whatever had happened to him must have caused some serious damage to be burning and itching constantly.  
Face: He slowly moved his jaw from side to side before peeling apart his parched, sticky lips and attempted to lick them with his equally parched tongue. He tried to speak, to call out, but all he was able to produce was a high pitched whine.

He heard voices and movement to the side of him, muffled at first but then fading in and becoming clearer. As he prepared to open his eyes he felt the irritating, jabbing pain in one of his eyes that he noted upon first becoming conscious.

“…ou hear me? How’s your pain?”

His eyelids flickered open briefly and he made out the murky, blurred figure of someone standing over him before he slammed his eyes shut again – the pain in his right eye stinging and burning worse when opened. He was sure there was a foreign object in his eye and tried to keep it as still as possible, aware that if he damaged his optic abilities in anyway then he’d have no chance of receiving treatment. The First Order would never extend the expense of a servo eye for a Stormtrooper grunt.  
He felt gentle fingers on his face pulling at the skin of his cheeks, attempting to get him to open his eyes. A light was pointed directly into both eyes and he slammed them shut, as tightly as possible. 

“No, no, don’t close them. I need you to wake up now, don’t go back to sleep”

But he really, REALLY wanted to go back to sleep and kept his eyes firmly closed and turned his face away from where the voice was coming from. The speaker told him once again that he wasn’t allowed to sleep anymore and he thought it best not to disobey an order.  
He huffed and groaned before trying to produce some saliva in his leathery, parched mouth in order to respond. Whoever it was at his side they wouldn’t leave him be, they asked him more questions that he struggled to process before manually opening one of his eyelids again and glaring the bright light into his bad eye. He reacted by gasping and trying to turn his head too sharply, the movement bringing fresh waves of intense pain.

“That was a bit silly, this is why you need to cooperate and do what I ask. Although I guess this means you’re still feeling some pain, would you like another dose of pain killers?”

He manages to croak out an affirmative and waits to feel the biting sting of the painkiller/sedative hypo-injector so that he can be numbed of all feeling and slide back into nothingness until he was appropriately healed. Unfortunately the Medic treating him didn’t appear to be following standard injury protocol or had forgotten to include the sedative because the overpowering pull of chemical unconsciousness never came. This was strange, why keep him awake for his injury recovery? All that would accomplish is wasting multiple doses of painkillers and regular meals on him until he could be rehabilitated back into his unit, whereas a brief time spent comatose wouldn’t be as much of a drain on resources and required less attention to him whilst healing.  
Instead of slipping back into the black he felt himself awaken fully whilst still feeling disorientated and sluggish. His body reacted automatically and his eyes started to flutter open, the sharp, gritty feeling got worse and he was now a hundred percent sure it was scratched in some way or something large was embedded in his eyeball. Tears welled up in response and he hoped that whichever medic was nearby didn’t see and assume he was weak enough to cry because of his injuries.

“How’s your pain now? I gave you half the remaining dose you can have for a few more hours, if you need the other half we won’t be able to give you any other painkillers for another four hours” 

“More…. Please” And wasn’t trying to speak those two words a whole fun little world of discomfort? He wondered when he could get a water ration or maybe he’d even be granted a tab of hydration gel, although that would all depend on exactly how he’d been injured.  
As the unnatural coldness of the painkillers swept into his arm from the hypo-injector he wondered if this trip to the med bay was thanks to some industrial accident in the course of his usual work (for which he would receive demerit and ration restriction as punishment even if he hadn’t caused the accident) or if he had finally joined the upper ranks of his garrison for a proper battle mission (for which he would be healed and sent on his way with a curt “Giving your body for the great of the First Order is valiant and right”)  
As he wondered if the lack of medically induced unconsciousness was some form of punishment (why would anyone want their troops to suffer like this?) and tried to piece together, exactly, had happened to him the medic by his side continued to chatter away inanely at him. They mentioned useless facts like how nice the ambient temperature was, wondered what was on the menu for lunch and chuckled to themselves about how someone or other was going to cause such a scene when they find out he was awake (although that did catch his attention, who was this and what kind of scene? Was he going to get a dressing down from one of the more emotionally unrestrained officers for his mistakes?)

Just as he was starting to truly tune the medic’s prattling out he realised a question had been aimed at him, he made an inquisitive noise to get them to repeat what had been said.

“I said how’s the pain now, honey? It should be completely gone but I wouldn’t be surprised if you had some left over aches in your back and shoulder, considering the kind of injury you got”

“My right eye hurts” And damn he’d wish they would authorise a water ration.

There was a little hum of amusement somewhere off to his left as the medic tried not to chuckle at him. “Your eye? There’s nothing wrong with it, no injury there”

He cracked his left eye open cautiously as it was still dry and light sensitive, he peeked at the blurry form of the medic and repeated himself – his eyes hurt, something was in it. The medic made another attempt to convince him there was nothing wrong but, after huffing about it for a moment, leant over and looked into his eye.  
Unfortunately they checked the left one and proudly proclaimed they were correct and nothing was wrong with it. Before he could make any further protests the medic called out to someone entering the room and moved away from his side, he tried to listen in to their conversation but the only specifics he could make out was instructions not to give him any more pain relief and some comment about him `kicking up a fuss about his eyes`. Soon after two people approached his bed and started doing something to it, from the rocking and clanking sounds he guessed they were preparing to move him elsewhere and figured he must be in a recovery room rather in a patient pod in the general medi bay area. Waking up in a recovery room meant he’d had an operation of some kind, he really needed to figure out what had happened to him.

The two people at his sides were continuing to talk about him but not to him. It was some medical type conversation at least, rather than some idle gossip the First Order medics were infamous for, and he tried to perk his hearing up a little to gain some information on the situation he was in. Unfortunately all he gathered was he seemed to be on a pretty heavy regime of medications and not all of them were to do with his mysterious injuries; why were they needing to strictly monitor his endocrine system’s functions like the pineal gland, the thymus and parathyroid? His body was regulated carefully so why were his sleep patterns, immune system and bones of concern? What kind of injury would mess his system functions up like the two medics were suggesting? The only thing he could think of was maybe he’d been captured by some Resistance filth and had been away from the First Order’s hygiene, betterment and body sanitation procedures for too long, perhaps he hasn’t been put under to recover because they need to place him in quarantine awake to monitor for symptoms of any of the many diseases the Resistance languishes in. 

He kept his eyes closed as his bed was transported through three sets of swinging doors before he was turned around and manoeuvred into whatever location he was needed in. He’d been in medi bays before throughout his life as a Stormtrooper and they were all set out in a very standard way, he’d almost wished he’d at least kept his left eye open during the journey as doors on hinges were certainly never used in any medi bay he’d seen before. Auto open doors with decontaminating wait chambers between rooms and hallways were always in place, mainly to help eradicate bacterial and viruses travelling along with medics and patients as they move around but also to help ensure a total sterile shut down should a highly infectious person need to be immediately quarantined.  
Clearly this was another layer added to the mystery of his injuries and he felt a slight headache start to form as he thought more about it (and oh joy of joys, more pain to deal with) Starkiller base may have been the only location he’d run Sanitation but it was required he know the ins and outs of how the First Order ran all of its medi bays across the galaxy, should he ever be shipped elsewhere. He racked his mind but came up with no known location where the far less hygienically effective hinged swing doors were in use. Maybe this was some temporary plant side base, requisitioned from the local populace or reclaimed from the Resistance (which would explain the unsterile side of things) which would lend more credibility to this being a battle field injury situation but still didn’t rule out him having been captive for whatever length of time had passed.

The two medics had finished securing his bed in place and a heavy hand on his uninjured shoulder broke him from his contemplation, it surprised him enough that both of his eyes flew open.

“There you go sleepyhead, all settled now! You be a good boy and don’t cause trouble or go running off, shit like that is more than my job is worth” The medic’s tone conveyed a heavy hint of distaste towards the end and they sounded more than a little condescending, the sweetness in their words earlier must have been the man’s normal bedside manner. With his eyes now fully open and his vision less blurry we was treated to the overly wide grin of the medic’s face looming over him. Something was off, the man’s hair was a touch too long and he had several piercings in one of his ears – what self-respecting citizen of the First Order would allow their personal appearance to become so ragged looking? Why hadn’t their superior called them up on these visual infractions?  
The medic’s false grin dimmed as he pulled his face away and turned to address the other person once more.

“Dibs I’m not the one to go tell fly-boy his little stray is finally with it. My shift was due to end before the turncoat’s vitals showed he was waking up and I’m sure as shit not going to have any patience for the Commander”  
The person to his other side snorted.

“Ward, you’ve got less patience than a droid has a sex drive, you grumpy fucker. Now get out of here so I can look after our friend here properly and let the General know he’s up. Dameron can find out from her”

Turncoat? Commander? GENERAL? Just what kind of trouble was he in here? His stomach twisted unpleasantly as panic began to settle in, something like the shadow of a memory surfaced in his mind and he vaguely recalled someone ordering him to attend reconditioning. It was a punishment he’d always managed to avoid before, mainly because trying to assist other members of his unit or Sanitation team wasn’t exactly detrimental to himself or the workings of the First Order but his Commanders often chastised him for being too concerned with other’s wellbeing and ability to complete a task. The main complaint was usually “How will they learn to succeed or be singled out for failure if you keep helping them?” and sometimes even “Don’t let your excellent work slip into mediocrity because you’re too busy helping a less talented `trooper” 

More vague almost memories started to surface. On one level of consciousness he was aware of and could hear the second medic speaking to him, asking a question, on another level he heard blaster fire and the sound of bodies hitting the ground. He smelt the chard plastic scent of `trooper armour that’s been hit at nearly point blank by a blaster weapon and, underneath that, the sickly copper of blood starting to dry. 

He tried to swallow but he’d still not been given even a tiny sip or water and his leathery dry tongue glued itself to the roof of his mouth, making every attempt to gulp down his nausea feel like he was choking instead. He felt like he was split, two of him in two places at once, the distinctive medicinal smell of a medi bay over lapped with the phantom scent of things being set on fire. The screams of men and women fought to be heard over the increasingly rapid beeps coming from whatever medical equipment he was hooked up to, he could feel sweat prickle and itch at his skin as drops of it gathered and soaked into the bed sheets – or where they whisked away by the efficiently absorbent underclothing beneath his armour?  
His stomach convulsed painfully as it tried to force up its contents but the only thing he had was stomach acid and bile which burned its way up his oesophagus to hit the back of his throat before it sloshed back down and sickened him even more. As panic and flashbacks to things he couldn’t properly remember or even be sure happened his body responded to the phantom threats by tensing up his muscles, ready to fight or to get the hell away. This caused new, fiery pain to ignite along his back and blaze across his right shoulder, he arched away from the bed and the fire turned into an inferno, his jaw clenched together so tightly that he would later worry his teeth cracked from the pressure but in the moment all he could think about was how his body was so against him that it wouldn’t even allow him to cry out for help. He was trapped; trapped in a body gripped by pain, trapped in a mind disabled by half remember scenes from an impossible battle. How could he be suffocating in his armour in arid desert, hiding on board the Finalizer sick with fear, fighting monsters of unimaginable savagery and killing the `troopers he’s supposed to fight with all at once? How would those situations ever happen?

He had lost his mind and lost control of his body, physically and mentally he felt his core self being trapped and attacked.

In the background noise of his mind he could hear the medic calling a name, feel them gripping his arms. A name was being calmly but loudly repeated in his face, over and over they called this name and soon more voice came crashing and clashing over him, like thunder claps in a storm at sea. He recognised each individual word he could hear but together nothing made sense, like language had escaped him along with his control. Everyone felt like they were shouting but he couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t just screams of the wounded and dying echoing in his mind.  
More hands joined the first and thrashed around to get away, the extreme panic and fear numbing the physical pain it caused to move so violently. He tried to scream through jaws clenched like a vice, his parched and acid burnt throat creating a noise so animalistic he briefly imagined some crazed beast had pounce on him and was holding him down with many claw like hands. Voices got louder, words became gibberish and howls of nonsense as the beeping of the machines monitoring him became the emergency bleeps and alarms of a crashing TIE fighter and he braced himself for the impact he remembered. Felt the force of it in sudden, vacuum like silence where he heard only one, two, three beats of his own heart before an explosion of noise and crashing sounds came rushing over him.  
He was dying. He was dying. He was dying.

Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.

Oh sweet freedom, he was going to die. 

Every atom of his being felt like it was being spun around and around and every single direction at once, his stomach made another attempt to vomit and then suddenly, so suddenly and so wonderfully he was enveloped by the pure black darkness. He felt for a moment exhilarating relief at the cold black state he was plunged into and then he was no longer aware of anything. 

 

******

 

Becoming conscious this time felt less like suddenly entering into existence from a blissful nothing and more like waking up the sleep cycle after a physically intensive combat exercise. He was immediately aware of his body and all the pains it was suffering through, the darkness was not black absolute and his sense didn’t come back online all at once with a cacophony sensory input.  
He couldn’t say how much time had passed or even if he was in the same place as before, he could hear the (much more steady, far less alarming) beep of the machine by his side and the gentle but indistinguishable sounds of people going about their work. He didn’t go through his mental check of which parts of his body hurt and may be inured, his whole body ached and he recalled with an odd sense of detachment the overwhelming panic that had caused every muscle to seize up. His back and shoulder shouted their grievances the loudest but although he could acknowledge the pain his mind felt wrapped in jelly and incapable of fully understanding and realising the physical situation.  
Although, there was one thing that irritated him to no end. It poked and prodded at his befuddled brain, lancing sharp moments of understanding through to his train of thought.

His eye. There was still something in his eye and it was aggravating as fuck.  
He took a deep, steadying breath and slowly drew back his eye lids, he tried to glance around as much as possible but every movement proved to remind him there was a foreign body in his right eye. If he weren’t so dehydrated it probably would have started to water, which would most likely help to clear the problem, it was the first time he could recall ever wishing to cry.

Something at the back of his mind told him that he was probably focusing on this one problem, this one irritation as a distraction from his continuing inability to remember where he was and what had happened to land him in this unfamiliar medi bay. If he focused on his eye he stopped himself from trying to remember and possibly coming back with answers he wasn’t ready to hear.  
Something at the front of his mind told the back of his mind to shut the hell up and that it could ignore as many scary issues as it wanted.

Turning his head gently to the side he was able to see that there were no artificial lights on, that the room was lit through large, evenly spaced windows and that he was very much alone.  
The beds that he could see were empty, some even looking like they had been occupied but cleared in a hurry with sheets still twisted and pillows retaining the imprint of resting heads. No one was sat by his side, but why should he expect them to be? A medic or med droid would be wasting time a resources if they spent all sat by an unconscious patient and simply waited for them to wake up. Hell, that would be a huge waste of anyone’s time, not just medical staff.  
Still, he felt a small undefinable twinge in his chest when he realised there was no pleasant face to greet him as he woke and he wondered why he ever thought there may be someone waiting for him to do so. As a strange sadness started to creep upon him the irritation in his eye ratchet up a notch and distracted him from the inexplicable loneliness.

He cast his vision around his surroundings once more and frowned, this medi bay looked nothing like something run by the First Order – even a base that had been taken over from native planet dwellers or some other inhabitants would have been treated to uniformly grey painted walls and a smattering of First Order insignias – this place though? It was haphazard in its equipment’s and furnishing’s origins, colour schemes were not uniform and made no sense and there was even evidence of decoration and personalisation on the walls and at bed sides. It was confusing and different and… kind of cheerful?  
He let himself drowsily observe his surroundings for a while, occasionally squinting his eyes and twitching his face in various ways, attempting to shift the annoyance out of his eye. He stopped trying to encourage any spit in his mouth, resigned to the fact that a desert had taken up residence on his tongue and his lips had dried and cracked like a piece of meat bark from a ration pack.

He’s not sure how long he allowed himself to simply exist and observe, it couldn’t have been any significant amount of time because the light shining in through the windows hadn’t noticeable moved with the passage of the sun (or suns?) outside. He was broken out of this reverie by a surprised but cheery greeting, they called out another person’s name but as there wasn’t a single other occupant of the room he assumed they were addressing him.  
The medic who approached his side, genuinely happy smile in place causing pleasant little crinkles around greenish yellow coloured eyes, was not visually familiar to him but if a Stormtrooper couldn’t develop the acute skill of vocal recognition they would find themselves very confused in a room full of identical masked faces. This was the second medic from before, however long ago that was, so this was either the same day and still within their shift or he had been out for an entire revolution of the shift rotation.

“I’m so glad you’re awake, you really gave us a scare earlier and I’ve been worried about you all afternoon. How you feeling? You need anything?”

“Water, please and...” He hesitated, recalling how the pervious medic had been dismissive of this earlier “My eye, my right eye, there’ something in it”

He expected to be given the brush off again but the medic leaned closer for inspection after handing over a cup of water with a small straw and made a considering noise.

“Mmm, Ward said he’d checked your eye in the recovery room but I gotta say it IS looking pretty red. You take a couple of sips of water, slowly now or you’ll be sick, and let me just have a proper look. Try not to blink for a moment”

He distracted himself from the medic gently pulling at the top and bottom eyelids by trying to remember if he’d ever encountered such a caring medic previously. The one from before had been informal by calling him `honey` (which was a work infraction sure, but a small one) but had been perfunctory in their ministrations. This one was clearly making an attempt at being gentle and taking care not to cause discomfort, the way he spoke was warm and held no deceptive notes. This medic genuinely cared about his patient’s wellbeing instead of merely wanting them fixed and out the door.

Clutching the small cup of water up to his face he resisted the primal urge to drain its contents in one gulp, the tiny sips landing on his parched tongue were nearly painful as they rehydrated it. He was several sips in before his mouth had been wetted enough to even allow him to swallow and he continued to slowly drain the cup as he followed the medic’s instruction to look up, down and from side to side.

“Ok Finn, I have my diagnosis: You’re eyes are stupidly dry so I’ll get some drops for that AND you’ve got one hell of a long eyelash practically glued to your eye thanks to said dryness. Both are easy fixes I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know” The medic threw a  
cheeky wink and a grin at him before refilling the water cup and walking over to a supply trolley and pulling out some glove, a small bottle and dropper and a medical swap.  
Upon returning the medic talked through the actions he was about to do in that caring, reassuring manner again, he once more gave the instruction not to blink and apologised beforehand about causing discomfort. The medic administered a few drops from the bottle into each eye and whilst holding open the right eye and reaching for the swap.

“Look up for me now Finn, try and roll your eye as far upwards as possible. Great now hold there, this will be over in a second” The swap was brought up to his eye and after a brief moment of stinging the medic gave a small cheer and suddenly retreated, leaving him to rapidly blink his no longer dry and now a hundred percent pain free eyes.

He looked over at the medic and was now able properly take note of the man’s appearance. From his position laying on the bed he wasn’t able to accurately guess how tall the medic was but he thought it would be fair to say the other man was a good few inches taller than himself, his skin was an interestingly pinky peach with light brown mottled spots scattered over the small amount of bare skin on show and the colour of the spots was repeated in the colour of the man’s warm, honey brown hair. His frame was slight and long limbed but he had a softness around his middle and no firm muscle definition in his arms, which gave the impression that although he wasn’t unfit he certainly wasn’t the kind of person to say no to a hearty meal in favour of lean rations and a strict workout regime.  
As a Stormtrooper he wasn’t that great with looking at and quantifying people’s faces, a ‘trooper does better cataloguing someone’s physical aspects - making them better at judging an opponent - and spending your life looking at helmeted and masked troops leads to a certain level of face-blindness, but he noted that the medic had a strong jaw that lead to a narrow chin, thin almost non-existent lips of a dark purplish hue and large, widely spaced eyes. The medic’s smile caused creases and wrinkles around his face but that only lent to the overall impression of being pleasantly attractive.

He instinctively smiled back at the medic and only worried momentarily about getting into trouble for showing such friendly emotion.

“Thank you, I know it seems odd considering I appear to have some more serious injuries but my eye was driving me crazy. I don’t know how this all happened but I guess a lash in the eye is the most ordinary thing about this whole situation”

The medic frowned and he worried he’d said something to anger him, interpreting expressions clearly wasn’t his strong point because when the medic next spoke his words were flooded with concern. “You don’t know how you got hurt? Do you know where you are at least, or how you got here?”  
He shook his head slowly “Um… I don’t even know where here is. I’m sorry?”  
“Ok, I just need to go grab a doctor. I’ll just be gone a couple of minutes but don’t you worry, I just want to make sure this is just some disorientation and not from a head injury me may have missed”

He tried to grab onto the medics wrist as he swiftly turned to make his way out of the room but he made the mistake of trying to lift and use his right arm to do so, causing him to hiss with pain as his injured shoulder was jostled.  
The medic stopped immediately and turned to check him over.

“Oh, try not to use that arm for now. We need to get the tissue damage fully assessed before we let you use it normally Finn”  
He winced as the medic cradled his arm and gently lowered it back to the bed, pain making him stutter his words “Why… why do you, ah!”

“Why do I what?”

“Why do you keep calling me Finn?”

The medic looked like he was biting the inside of his check before giving a slow, evenly toned answer.  
“Because it’s your name, it’s on your medical documents and the Commander filled those in himself. Is that not your name?”

He frowned, his name? 

“I don’t have a name, I have a designation – FN-2187”

A look of what could either be concern or panic flutters across the medic’s features, it makes him feel anxious and gives him the distinct feeling that he somehow just gave the wrong answer.  
After a brief moment the medic takes a fortifying breath through his small, slightly upturned nose before giving him a watery smile.

“Where, exactly, do you think you are right now? And don’t give me any cheek by saying something dumb like `I’m in bed` or `I’m in the hospital`, ok? I really need you to be honest right now” 

His heart beat suddenly went into double time and the painful, sick feeling was clawing it way up and down his stomach again. The medic’s voice was sort of sad sounding but mainly tense with a hidden panic or some other emotion and his mind was drawing a blank on what was the correct response to this situation. His mind flittered around various points from his training but nothing covered “What to do if everything feels wrong, looks wrong and people get upset when you state your designation”  
He tried to open his mouth to say something, anything at all, but his traitorous body made his throat and gullet contract and relax like it was stopping him from vomiting (and thus also from being able to speak) The medic waited patiently by his side and after screwing his face up in an almost painful manner he was able to force his words out.

“But that’s… that’s all I know about where I am. In ah… in a bed, in a medi bay. The only other thing I can add is that we’re planet side? I don’t know what planet, what base… where… ah… where I am. I don’t… I don’t know, I…”

The medic started talking again but was interrupted by loud bleeps and whirs that proceeded the arrival of a speeding astromech. The spherical droid seemed to be screeching the same series of noises over and over as loudly as it could, a repeated shout of some binary phrase. Its optical lens swung to and fro before it landed on his bed, it shrieked and aimed itself at them – taking off so fast that it over shot and ended up crashing into the supply trolley.  
He was slightly alarmed by this sudden appearance and it shocked him right out of his uncertain panic. He frowned, something in the very back of his brain was trying to get his attention, but when he focused on it the thought evaded his grasp.  
The medic rushed over the right the trolley and pick up the supplies that had scattered everywhere whilst they called out “Joy! No visitors! Why did you let this droid in here?!”  
A woman stuck her head around the door way into the room and yelled back “Let it? I didn’t `let` the droid do anything, it damn near caused an accident by crashing its way in here!”  
He stopped paying attention to the medic and this Joy woman yelling back and forth at each other, neither willing to concede their anger. The droid had untangled itself from a roll of bandages and, at a much more sedate speed, made its way over to his bedside. He recognised the series of bleeps and bloops it had been yelling earlier, this time gentle and intercepted by some soft coos and an inquisitive whir or two. He’d never thought of binary to be an emotive language and any droids he’d encountered before all spoke Standard, but now he felt like there were whole layers of meaning behind every series of noises the droid made and that even though he may not be able to translate a single word for sure, maybe he could glean the jist of what it was trying to say to him.

The small droid seemed to be both concerned and caring yet very excited to be (attempting) to communicate with him. He’d never really spoken at length to a droid and he’d never seen a BB unit before.

The thought at the back of his mind made itself a little louder.

A BB unit.

A very important droid.

A white and orange BB unit.

It was someone’s buddy?

It was…

 

“…BB-8?”

He said it so softly, so unsure of himself, that the medic didn’t hear the words pass his lips (still busy having some kind of pointless argument with the woman by the door, both of them agreeing with the other but still shouting, like they didn’t want to admit they were both right)

BB-8 heard him and the little droid rolled closer and cooed happily, although he did startle a little when its butane lighter shot out at him and lit up. He hesitated but then muscle memory kicked in from the times comms communications wouldn’t work or couldn’t be used and raised his (uninjured or simply less painful) arm to give the thumbs up signal back.

Other thing started to come back to him like he’d never forgotten them in the first place. Like when you can only recall seven designations of a team of eight ‘troopers but then something random suddenly jogs your memory and you can’t believe you ever forgot FC-4735 in the first place.

It was an ebb and flow though, things seemed out of order and he wasn’t sure when these odd whisper memories were from. Everything felt like a lifetime ago but still so fresh he could almost feel the burning bite of freezing snow on his face whilst at the same time the dessert sun bit down ruthlessly and without mercy on the back of his neck. Screams of men savaged by foul monsters was overlaid with the subharmonic hum of a weapon he’d never been trained to use but felt a natural affinity with.  
The astromech focused and refocused its optical lens at him, like it had picked up on the fact that something was wrong, and tried to communicate with him again and although he found the whirs and beeps to be somewhat comforting he still had no idea what it was saying. Oddly enough he felt compelled to reassure the droid, tell it that he was ok (even though he was not) and that it shouldn’t worry (even though he had no clue as to WHY it was concerned in the first place) instead of speaking he reached down and gently placed his hand on top of the droid’s domed head and simply smiled at it. He didn’t really know what to say to this droid anyway, the situation was all too strange and his head was still a mess of memories and dreams.

The droid cooed contentedly and leaned into his touch. He knew he knew this droid, knew it was called BB-8, but for the life of him couldn’t figure out how he would have met and befriended an astromech, let alone the kind rarely used by the First Order, he struggled to establish warm relationships with other `troopers and that was without a language barrier. He supposed he’d always been a little fond of the maintenance droids who’d taken his orders on shift, never speaking harshly to them or openly calling them things mean names like some of the other `troopers did. Maybe this was just an extension of what Captain Phasma called his “Predisposition to being overly and unnecessarily caring” or he had just felt so left out in the cold by his unit that he extended politeness and curtesy to the droids he almost felt a kinship with. Either way the little droid at his bedside had not only been happy to see him but had been so excited it had knocked over equipment in its haste to get to him, no one had ever been excited to see him... at least, he thinks not. Some forgotten thought bugged him and he struggled to pull a name and a face out of thin air.

Before he could fully form the missing memory a doctor appeared by his side and caught his attention.

“Now I don’t want you to be alarmed, especially after the nasty panic attack you had earlier, but we need to run a few tests on you. We checked for traumatic head injuries when you first came in but didn’t find anything too worrying, now we know you’ve got a few issues remembering and are awake enough to actually speak we’d like to do some more thorough investigations to see how everything is ticking over. Ok?” The doctor smiled benignly at him and waited for a response, like it was up to him to say whether or not they could run any more tests.

He nodded and the doctor clapped her hands together, like she was genuinely pleased at this.

“Right! Well, good old Magna here will get you cleaned up a little and talk you through what we’re going to be doing. I just need to pop off and have a quick chat with the General to reassure her, she’s been rather worried about you young man! But she’ll be pleased to hear you’re a little more with it than earlier, even if you’ve gone and misplaced a few memories!” She beamed at him again, placed a careful hand on his left shoulder before turning away and walking off at a brisk pace, her shoes click, click, clicking away out of the room and down a hall way.  
The medic, or Magna as he now knew, stopped at the foot of his bed, hands on hips and huffed out a frustrated breath. He thought the medic was now upset about having more work today but their eyes were directed at BB-8.

“Ok you little menace, I know seeing your friend awake after so long is pretty exciting but we need you out of the way whilst we check him over. Get out and don’t come charging back in here until you get permission! And even then don’t come charging in! Roll at a respectable pace! I won’t be having you knocking over all my supplies every time Finn so much as twitches an eyelid” 

BB-8 beeped its protest over getting kicked out but Magna’s steely gaze never wavered. The droid blorped sadly, dome and optical lens lowered in a chastised manner as it sedately rolled away from his bed. It stopped near the foot of his bed, looked up at Magna and then back at himself, whirred what sounded like a goodbye at him and then headed to the door.  
Just as Magna was about to start speaking to him again the little droid stuck its head round the door frame and loudly bleeped and whirred some more, repeating what he now assumed to be binary for his own name (designation?) and kept going until he lifted his hand and waved goodbye.

Once the medic was sure BB-8 and trundled away and wasn’t going to interrupt again he sat himself gentle on the edge of the bed and placed a comforting hand on his leg.

“I know this must all be so very strange and stressful for you, but don’t worry. We’re going to run a few tests but if anything hurts too much or you feel too tired just let us know and we can stop until you feel better. You’ve been through a lot but you’ve done so much for us all, everyone one base is grateful to how much you’ve helped, you’re one of our own now and the Resistance looks after their family”  
Magna squeezed his leg a little and looked him in the eyes before the peachy pink skin on his face darkened a little into an attractive blush. “And, well, you know, I think you’re incredibly brave, uh, particularly. Even before what you did for us with Starkiller, just… wow, you must be something special to defeat a lifetime of conditioning and uh… you know. I just… um, wanted to say it’s really admirable”  
It would have been sweet, the way Magna was trying to hit on him without it seeming like he was being hit on, but one word had stuck in his head and attractive medics with their hand burning warm on his knee couldn’t distract him from the vital piece of information he had been missing.

“I’m sorry but… did you say I’m _**with the Resistance?**_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the messed up formatting of the fic - all the paragraph spaces and whatnot sort of got messed up when I copied the text into the AO3 text box.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn continues to suffer and wonders if he is a guest or a prisoner of the Resistance.  
> BB8 makes a longer appearance.  
> Poe does not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some text pulled directly from the novelisation of The Force Awakens. I know it’s a little unfair to use dialogue that wasn’t in the film to base a little part of the chapter on, but when I read that passage my immediate thought was “Wow, I can give Finn some amazing insecurities from this!”  
> So… sorry not sorry!  
> Also, usual reminder that I may accidentally switch tenses between one paragraph and another – partly due to dyslexia, partly due to the fact that sometimes I don’t work on this for a month because I’ve been too busy adulating to write. If you spot mistakes, please kindly point them out to me so I can’t correct them. So, yeah, still looking for a beta reader!  
> Additional note; I’m aware that the third person POV does an odd shift; I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away from confusing prose for long, I’m a sucker for informal narrative structure. I’ve tried not to go too weird with it, so it’s kind of subtle. But yeah, sorry ‘bout me.

Chapter three

Things become awkward after that, even though he tried his best to explain what he did and didn’t know, and to get across the point that he was pretty ok with being at a Resistance base, many of the medical staff who came to see him in the following days treated him like he would pull a blaster out of nowhere and start fighting his way out and back to the First Order.

Others simply refused to look him in the face and only spoke to him when it was absolutely necessary. It made him feel like he was in a vacuum, cold and lonely even though there were people around him several times a day. The staff still hadn’t moved anyone into the bed bays around him so he was in the ward by himself for long stretches of time. Other than having check-ups, being taken for tests and medicines administered the only time he had genuinely enjoyable company was when Magna came to see him. The medic was no longer charged with staying by his side for the whole shift now that he was awake for most of the time, but the taller male would swing by his bedside to say hi anytime the medic was near and would usually come sit with him on his lunch break.

Finn was still getting used to his name, it felt a little like wearing boots that were a size too big – not uncomfortable but it made him trip up every now and then, but when Magna smiled so warmly at him and called the name out cheerily every time he came by to say hello it made something warm ignite pleasantly in his chest. He wasn’t able to hold back the smile that would break across his own face when Magna called out to him, that had never happened when someone called out his designation and the bright feelings were worth the general awkwardness the name caused at other times.

Another enjoyable, but wholly less frequent, event was when Dr Camilla (“Call me Cam!”) Jaque paid him a visit. She was the loud but eternally cheerful doctor who had put his new care plan into action just after Magna had figured out he was having problems with his memory and had briefly interrupted his reunion with BB-8.

Finn hadn’t felt totally comfortable calling the doctor by her first name, she had earned her title of doctor through hard work and dedication and he felt like he should address her with respect, just like he would any other superior. She’d laughed when he told her that, Finn found telling people the honest truth about why he thought and did certain things more helpful than letting them assume he was some totally naïve and backwards social outcast, it wasn’t a mocking laugh or even felt like she was laugh AT him. If he’d thought the doctor was loud during a normal conversation he quickly realised she spoke in a near whisper when compared to her bellowing, full bodied laughter. He liked it, it made him want to laugh along with her (and he told the doctor this as well, which caused her to erupt in even more joyful, booming laughs) She understood that a life time of regimented hierarchy and his own awe of the skill one needed to heal so many people and they shortly came to an agreement; Finn wouldn’t call her Cam but accepted Dr Cam as a mix of formal and informal, whilst the doctor agreed to not keep him in the dark about his medical conditions and would openly tell him of any concerning or worrying results.

Dr Cam and Manga were the only two visitors Finn had for a while, it had been decided on his behalf that overwhelming him with too many people during the time he was convalescing could distress him too much and potentially aggravate his condition. He wasn’t entirely sure which condition they were referring to; the physical injuries, his fuzzy recollection or the semi frequent panic attacks.

Today was one of the days he expected Dr Cam to come by and visit. He’d had some cognitive tests, a psych assessment and several rounds of blood tests a couple of days prior and he knew the results for all of them would have been returned and discussed by the medical staff that morning. Magna wasn’t on shift that day and Finn wasn’t expecting him to visit anytime soon, the cute medic had pulled a last minute double shift after as a couple of people from the overnight team had been pulled from rotation in order to accompany an aid mission. It seemed that although the First Order didn’t know which planet the Resistance base was on they DID have intel on places where their sympathisers and supporters were located, resulting in what seemed like random attacks from Stormtrooper ground units or the Order using their own contacts to ensure whole populations were being cut off from essential trade in food and medicine. This meant that the Resistance was running rather thin on the ground as they sent out squadrons of Starfighters to assist those under attack and ground personnel like the medics to help the sick, starving and wounded. 

After hearing about these problems from both Magna and Dr Cam Finn had offered to help in any way he could, he knew being bed bound (not by his own choice, the doctors where perplexed by how he was healing and wanted to keep him under strict observation – so no running off to help deliver aid) didn’t exactly make him an attractive choice for rolling up his sleeves and joining in on the effort but he’d mentioned to Dr Cam that if he got a look at how some of the attacks were being conducted he may be able to predict what the First Order’s next step would be. After all tactics, strategy and combat planning were all part of the package when you got fast tracked onto the command course.

The Resistance medical staff were still weary of him though and his requests to be of assistance were all not so suitably brushed off with comments like “We don’t want to exhaust you by putting you to work” or “Seeing the footage may cause you too much mental distress, better make sure you’ve been cleared by psych for stuff like that” But what he knew they were really saying was that they didn’t trust him, that he’d woken up confused and thinking he was still in the First Order, and who are they to believe him when he says he never wants to go back there?

He couldn’t really blame them, he wasn’t too sure how much he would have trusted some Resistance soldier wondering into a First Order base and telling everyone that they’d renounced everything their lives and stood for up until that point and they totally wanted to commit themselves to their enemy. It was a difficult situation all round, they needed to know he could be trusted and he was still in a place where he couldn’t fully trust his own mind. There were some nights where he would wake up with a scream strangled in his throat, terror and panic immobilising him and seeing First Order dormitories super imposed over the walls of the medi bay ward. Was the Resistance a dream? Was there something broken in his mind and he was really laying paralysed in his bunk with the rest of his garrison?

Sometimes he would be frozen that way for hours, able to see the light in the room shift and change as the suns rose outside but gripped in the living nightmare playing out in his head and behind his eyes. He still wasn’t sure how much of the terrifying images he relived over and over where real memories or sick dreams dredged up by his faulty subconscious. Every time it happened he forced himself to remember as much as he could, methodically noting down the events he had visions of, the sounds, the smells and the feelings he experienced. Went through them like a checklist each time and tried his best to detach himself from the emotions and focus more on the fact, the psychologist he saw once a day helped him through this. She would help him out of bed and wheel him into a calm, quiet room and ask him about any new panic attacks, flashback or nightmares he may have had and then get him to close his eyes and try his best to put himself back in those moments, talk her through them like they were happening right then and there. She would record him speaking and then ask him to go over it all again, this time asking him questions, stopping him at points where he seemed most emotional and getting him to focus on things like sight and sound instead of what he was feeling.

He hated those times when he’d had fresh memories and nightmares to tell her about and being made to relive them over and over whilst he mentally walked through everything he could remember. Sometimes his sessions would get no further than him reliving his trauma, unable to go on and focus on the next step of pin pointing every emotion he was feeling in the moment, discussing it and then removing said emotions from his narrative for the next time he had to talk it through. Sometimes his whole two hours would be filled with exhausted crying, anger, frustration and pain. The psychologist would push him until he felt nearly as bad as when he was in a full on nightmare or panic attack, he resented her so much for this and couldn’t see how deliberately and viciously poking at painful mental wounds was going to help him get better. The worst sessions where when he got so distraught he was physically unwell, the psychologist offering no comfort or sympathy – simply telling him he needed to push, to try hard, to confront the problems, telling him that he wasn’t making progress and that he needed to focus and do as she told him.

He hated her and he hated the therapy and he hated, hated, hated himself for being so fucking defective. 

It was no wonder the medical staff didn’t want to speak to him like he was a normal human being like them, it was no wonder they didn’t trust him and kept him separated from any other living thing for hours and hours on end. He was suppressed they didn’t just decide he was more hassle than he was worth and either set him up for a total brain reboot or even cut him off from medical treatment and just leave his broken body to finish him off.

There were times when Finn lay still and silent and the only thing he could think about was how awfully and terribly sad he was, how he couldn’t even imagine what it felt like during those times when he was happy or excited. He wondered if he was even capable of feeling any other emotions than crushing misery and anger. He was sure he was hated, he was sure he was worth less than a pile of broken starship pieces and about as useful as well.

The therapy he was under made him not want to talk to the psychologist but he forced himself to relive those memories and nightmares for her. But there was one thing he would never tell her, never tell anyone he was sure, was that he didn’t want to get better. Not that he wanted to carry on living his facsimile of a life like this, no, he didn’t want to carry on at all. Sometimes he just wished he could stop being, stop existing all together and turn into nothingness.  
But then, sometimes, he would wake up in the morning and hear birdsong outside and think it was beautiful or Magna would appear round the door frame of his ward and he would smile and actually feel something other than emptiness. Sometimes he would fire off an unexpected witty remark and Dr Cam would throw her head back and laugh uproariously and call him “My dear bright spark!” as her eyes crinkled and her cheeks flushed from smiling.

He may not know whether they considered him a friend but Finn couldn’t imagine leaving these people behind. He knew their faces and listened out for their voices, and even on days where his eyes stung from being kept awake all night by his own sobbing, he dared not think about how disappointed they’d be if they found out he would rather be dead.  
So he kept that part of his torment a secret hidden away and relived his bad dreams and bad memories every day over and over in the clam, quiet room with his clinically detached psychologist. Stars only know what the Resistance would do to him if they found out he was wasting their time and their help by wanting to be dead. Logically he knew he may feel worse before he felt better, he got told that many times during his sessions, like it was supposed to be a balm for his mind when it shattered and plunge him into misery. So he thought of his mental recovery like endurance training, he had to keep going and ignore the pain and push through it all otherwise he would be a failure and they would never let him rest.

Sometimes he asked around about things and people he could remember from his time after breaking free of the First Order, he ached to know if Rey was ok and who had survived the attack on Starkiller base. It hurt more than having his offers of help brushed aside when he realised that they didn’t tell him anything not because they didn’t know, but because they wanted to keep those answers from him. It made worry twist his stomach into painful knots when he thought that Rey could be laying in another bed in another ward somewhere and they’re scared to let him see her, or worse, that she had been killed by Kylo Ren whilst he was useless and dying in the snow. He’d seen the Master of the Knights of Ren ruthlessly, and without remorse, impale Han Solo with a lightsabre before allowing him to fall into the very bowls of Starkiller base below them. He had no doubt that a man like Kylo Ren would see no issue with murdering bright, strong, wonderful Rey.

He ruminated on this in his lonely hospital bed, too many emotions crashing down on him for any single one of them to present on his face. He must have looked so odd, sitting motionless and blank faced, hands lightly fisted in his lap, he wasn’t surprised that Dr Cam had a cautiously worried expression on her face when he finally looked up and realised she was there.  
He gave her a watery smile and apologised, lied and told her he was trying to remember some of the binary Magna was teaching him – the language of the droids escaping his grasp like no other concept he’d encountered before.

“If you’re not feeling up to the company I could come back later, my dear. All I’ve got for you are some boring old results and I imagine they wouldn’t hold your interest for too long if you’re in need of a little nap instead”

The doctor spoke in a more quiet and subdued manner than Finn had ever heard from her before. He didn’t want her to worry about him and he certainly didn’t want her to go away and leave him alone again. Instead he patted invitingly on the bed beside his legs.

“I think I’ve napped enough for three whole life times and besides, when have medical results ever NOT been interesting?” He gave her what he hopped was a reassuring grin and settled down to hear her go over his results.

“Right Finn, well last few brain scans have been normal and we’re all in agreement that you don’t have a traumatic brain injury, which we knew before you decided it was high time to wake up and greet the world but it never hurts to check! That fuzzy memory of yours is less physical trauma and more, well, emotional trauma. Plus, I can’t imagine waking up after a three week long snooze and going straight into a panic attack did wonders for your thought process, so we’re satisfied that therapy is the right medicine for this”

As she was talking Dr Cam was flicking through scan images of Finn’s head on a datapad, occasionally stopping to point out grey scale images of different sections and brightly lit ones of his brain activity and telling him about how certain responses were expected, some slightly abnormal but nothing they were worried about affecting his health. They talked back and forth about how his brain seemed to be running differently than expected, areas of his brain lit up and responded in an unusual way.

“It’s like you brain is a network of information drives, each one doing different jobs and working with different areas in certain ways” Dr Cam had paused on a brightly coloured image, taken when Finn had been asked a series of seemingly unrelated questions, like a nonlinear exam.

“Yours has been set up in a way that we don’t usually see, you think along unfamiliar lines and some areas are more dominant than others. You’ve mentioned having problems reading facial expressions and feeling like you have to work harder to recognise faces? Well, the part that deals with those kinds of things has been underdeveloped, this is something that has been caused by your upbringing but it is something we can help you with. Other areas, like long term memory are top notch! You can memorise much longer series of instructions and patterns than most and you only need one or two repetitions whereas most struggle to recall lists with more than four or five items and need to have them repeated or written down from anywhere between three to five times”

He was different, was he broken? He’d suspected his brain didn’t run in the same way as everyone else’s but now he was being shown psychical evidence of this.

Dr Cam carried on, oblivious to Finn’s distress, and explained how neural pathways can be changed or reconnect with parts they’ve been cut off from. That the brain was incredibly good at healing itself but his wasn’t damaged, and although he may struggle learning new skills in a different environment there was nothing for his grey matter to actually correct.  
“Although, there is something that we may have to give special focus to I’m afraid” Dr Cam put down the datapad and turned to face Finn head on “Your ability to process emotions doesn’t stop at just reading another person’s face. You’ve not been raised to properly deal with your own, you may feel things more strongly now or not be able to fully access a wider range of emotions. This isn’t something that is unique to you though, there are plenty of neuro divergent types who have similar problems. I, however, think that with lots of care and talking therapies you’ll be totally fine”

Finn felt that maybe there was more she wasn’t telling him, that it wasn’t all just brain junk and his First Order upbringing that had fouled up his ability to properly process emotions. He knew that sometimes he felt things with scary intensity or didn’t react to situations in the same way as other’s he’d observed. But his doctor friend didn’t seem to think there was too much wrong with him and as she beamed warmly at him from her perch on his bed Finn felt a spark of hope that things may start getting better for him.

After he learns how to deal with this Post Traumatic Stress Disorder stuff, maybe it was going to take longer thanks to his brain being hardwired differently? Who knows? But at least he was starting to make more, real, connections with people and these were the kind of people who only wanted to help him.

Magna was fast become a good friend and maybe once he was out of medical they could be something more.

Dr Cam was like a loud, positive sun that would burst out of the clouds on dreary days and give him a good dose of straight talking, no nonsense companionship.

Rey…. Rey was off doing big, important things because she was such a big, important person and he thought of her often. He’d been told of how she’d tried to stay by his side right up until she headed off to her destiny, how she’d growled at some of the medics that they _“Need to really, REALLY look after my friend, OK”_ Sometimes, when Finn was left alone he would think of her and a silly thought would reach him that she would maybe be thinking of him as well at that very same time. It was just an odd inkling he had, late at night or fleetingly during his lonely days, and he was sure it was entirely fabricated by his subconscious imagination but sometimes the former Stormtrooper would swear he knew exactly when Rey was having worried thoughts about if he was healing well or when something exciting had happened and the scavenger girl wished Finn was there to share the moment with her. When this happened Finn would indulge in a little make believe; he would concentrate on Rey, on her smile, on her fierceness in battle, her genius with all things mechanical, her bravery. He would imagine all the warmth the joy her friendship brings him becoming a ball in his chest, lighting him up and fizzing through his nerves, then he would think a message back to her like he had some kind of mental commlink. Sometimes he would think _“I’m ok”_ if he felt she needed reassurance that he was on the path to healing, sometimes he would tell her he missed her and rarely, in those dark nights he suffered through, he would ask her to send him some of her strength. 

It was a stupid fantasy; imagination was trained out of troopers at as early an age as possible and Finn felt like a child with an imaginary friend. He didn’t tell Magna or Dr Cam that he sometimes felt Rey in the back of his mind, that he sometimes tried to talk back to this hallucination. He was sure all that would get him would be increased psych sessions and pitying looks at the very best or being deemed irrevocably defected and left in total isolation at the very worst. 

Maybe the imaginary Rey thoughts were caused by having his brain’s neural pathways hi-jacked by the Stormtrooper program? Maybe he was having some kind of loneliness induced psychotic break? He couldn’t say, and in all honesty he didn’t want to dwell on that aspect of whatever this was – those brief moments when he feels in touch with his friend were treasured by the lonely young man and he didn’t want to give them up. 

Something else Finn would never give up were the covert visitations he got from a certain little droid. It seemed that no one had explicitly given the astromech permission to come see him after Dr Cam had shooed BB-8 out of the ward so Finn could be sent for tests. Waiting to be given permission hadn’t been an official order so the droid felt relatively at ease ignoring protocol every few days to come and check on one of its humans, for what was a better reason to disobey than to ensure those clunk headed medi droids hadn’t malfunctioned in some way and Finn’s care program was not being completed? 

The spherical droid would appear at Finn’s bedside without warning and at seemingly random hours of day or night, sometimes Finn would only become aware of his visitor when the droid chirruped a question at him (Finn had learnt to differentiate between a statement and a question in the language of droids, but was still struggling to translate the contexts) and more often than not he would awake in the night to find BB8 keeping silent watch over him or rolling around the ward, as if on guard duty. Finn had a theory that his small friend had found some secret way onto his ward, as none of the staff ever mentioned seeing the droid and many times he watched BB zoom away towards the doors when leaving him, yet the doors themselves never even swung open an inch. He supposed there must be some vent or access crawl space along the same wall that the droid was using as its own personal entrance and exit. 

Although Magna had been kind enough to spend some time teaching Finn the basics of binary he was really struggling to pick it up as a language. Binary was not considered useful to learn by the First Order, just like Shyriiwook and any other Galactic language that humans could not speak themselves – if the vast majority of First Order members had vocal cords that could not beep or grunt or trill according to the spoken language then it was considered up to that species to learn Formal Standard, and if they couldn’t? Well, the First Order had little time for species that were so uncivilised as to not speak Standard. Because of this Finn had never had to learn another being’s form of communication that he couldn’t speak in. Finn found not being able to repeat words back or construct sentences himself was creating a barrier to his being able to understand binary, and with access to a datapad to assist his learning being denied he was left feeling frustrated at his own inability to pick up a new skill. He was used to placing at the top of his class in performance reviews and although Finn had struggled with some aspects of his training (ignoring external distractions in battle field simulations; like children screaming and troopers dying, dispatching those who refused to follow First Order commands, erasing instinctual reactions like flinching or going to help a fallen member of his unit) he was used to being able to absorb commands and new skills sets. Failing at something like being able to understand his own friend felt like a massive personal blow, Finn was unsure of how to deal with feelings of his own stupidity. Of course, the one time he tried to apologise to BB8 and referred to himself as being too dumb to learn, the droid had gone off on a long series of screeches and loud beeps that Finn took to mean the droid disagreed with his self-assessment and cause a curious medic to stick their head around the door frame to find the source of the noise (and leading to BB8 trying its best to hid under Finn’s bed to avoid being spotted) Since then Finn had avoided berating himself in earshot of BB8 and quietly struggled on with his education in binary as best as he could. The droid had taken it upon itself to try and teach Finn but the going was still slow, the bed bound young man had quickly picked up things like tone meaning (a certain pitch and cadence indicated a question being asked and could be distinguished from a statement or direction being given and who knew droids could be sarcastic?) and if BB8 went slow enough he could understand some words individually, but it wasn’t always easy to guess what was being said if all you could pick was “Something something there something. You something no something something something Poe is something something about you”

 

Having BB8 visit unexpectedly had been a surprising, but not unwelcome, asset to Finn’s recovery as well. The handful of times the droid had been there when Finn woke up from a nightmare, shivering and disorientated, he had found the length of time it takes to recognise his whereabouts and focus his mind was greatly reduced as the little droid cooed and hummed reassuringly at his bedside. Sometimes Finn wondered if that was what it was like for children who had grown up with loving parents and caregivers; when they awoke from night terrors would the people who love them settle their little ones back to sleep with pleasant words and calming presence? Although he would never consider BB8 as anything resembling a parent (mainly because he wasn’t sure how one would associate a person with parenthood) Finn did take great comfort in considering the droid as part of his tiny, salvaged together family alongside Rey, Dr Cam and Magna.

There was one person that was missing from Finn’s little circle of friends and after initial questions on Poe’s wellbeing had been shot down by one of the medics as being `not his place to question the whereabouts of Resistance members`, Finn began to try and use his minuscule binary skills in earnest and question BB8 the next time the droid made an appearance. 

When Finn next saw the droid he just about waited for their usual pleasantries to pass -BB8 would beep a greeting, Finn would tell it how please he was to see them and then the small droid would say what Finn had figured out to be “Would you like to hear about my day?” (even if it was two in the morning, he figured the droid had learnt that talking about one’s activities was standard procedure when visiting a hospital bedbound friend) and Finn would gratefully encourage the droid to tell him, even though he was a long way off from understanding most of what BB8 was saying – Once their now standard and comfortable greetings were out of the way Finn took a deep breath and asked BB8 the question that had been bugging him for a few days.

“I was just wondering, I mean… it’s not that big a deal, but why hasn’t Poe asked to see me?” Finn looked away, biting his lip and feeling thankful that his heart rate was no longer being monitored as he could feel his heat pounding away in his chest. It wasn’t that Finn expected anything from the Resistance Pilot and he knew that everyone on the base was pretty busy – destroying one First Order mega weapon/star consuming planet didn’t exactly mean the fight was over, not by a long shot – but he knew he’d been cleared for visitors a few days ago and he’d hope that maybe Poe would have wanted to at least say `hi`.   
BB8 rocked its spherical body backwards and forwards whilst it contemplated its answer, the lens of its optics never left Finn’s face as it formulated a response. Finn wasn’t sure if it was trying to break some bad news to him or come up with a lie, as emotive as the droid was it struggled to fabricate false information as easily as most organic life forms. Finn silently berated himself; BB8 was most likely trying to phrase its response using the few simple sentences could understand. There was no point giving a detailed explanation when Finn could just about translate a basic greeting in binary.  
But the BB unit was still silent and still shifting the sphere of its body back and forth, like an anxious child fidgeting because they were trying to keep a secret.

“BB, it’s ok if you think I won’t be able to understand you. Does he not know I’m awake? Or maybe he thinks I’m too sick to see anyone. Maybe if you just tell Poe I’m ok to have visitors now, that he just needs to check in with the medics first, then he’ll come over. Not that you’re terrible company BB8, but I’d love to be able to just see him” Finn stops himself from adding _`and make sure he is actually alive`_   
It was difficult for him, sometimes, to trust his memories from the whole nightmare that started when he landed on Jakku for the first time. The powerful depression that had overwhelmed him when he failed (or thought he had failed) to save the pilot from the downed Special Forces TIE Fighter had driven so many different aspect of his actions later on that even his unexpected reunion with Poe did little to help him recover. Every time he thought about the Resistance pilot his mind echoed with the memory of screaming Poe’s name even as thick black smoke scorched his throat and clogged his lungs, to the feeling of blindly pulling at what he thought was the man’s arm but turned out to be just the empty flight jacket, he shuddered as images of the TIE Fighter getting swallowed whole by the sinking sands and being positive that Poe had disappeared down with it. 

Finn thought that maybe if he could see Poe and chat to the man outside of life or death situations then he could reconnect something in his brain and the sickening visions of his friend’s death would stop. 

Well, Finn _hoped_ that Poe was his friend.

 

There was a doubt, small and squirming and utterly unwanted, that would sometimes accompany the memory of trying to save Poe on Jakku. Finn didn’t want to think believe it, he felt bad for even briefly considering that Poe could be like that but... what if Finn had just been a means to an end? What if now he had helped Poe complete his mission and take down the Star Destroyer he had simply been cast aside? He had been a tool of the First Order; useful to them for the functions he could perform, important only as part of a collective rather than as an individual. Poe’s mission had pushed him past survival, he hadn’t cared about his own life, just so long as the map had avoided discovery by the First Order and made its way into the hands of the Resistance. Sometimes Finn wondered if Poe had seem him the same way the First Order had, important for what he could help the pilot accomplish rather than valued as another living being. 

BB8 gave out a subdued, but distressed, sounding beep. It was concerned for Finn and wanted to ease its friend’s anxiety but at the same time had no way of doing so. It knew the answer to Finn’s question, could easily tell him that the pilot had been informed that he had clearance to visit but kept putting it off and made it pretty clear that he had no intention of doing so any time soon. The droid was certain that this information would be highly detrimental to Finn’s state of mind, especially since BB8 had no explanation available as to WHY Poe was conducting himself like this. It was a mystery to the droid and it had known its master for many standard cycles, it could not process how this information would translate to Finn who had known Poe for a much shorter, but highly emotionally charged, time.  
Finn was BB8’s new friend, Poe was BB8’s longest friend and also its master. Finn and Poe were important to the droid and it has a strong interest in ensuring its important people were happy and well cared for, it had no problem with delivering an electric shock to those that cause its important people harm and/or distress. Rey had given specific instructions to BB8 to take extra care of Finn in her absence. Poe was causing Finn harm and/or distress.  
This was confusing for the poor droid.

In the end BB8 had decided that responding to Finn’s request of delivering instruction to Poe regarding visiting could constitute as satisfactory answering of his prior question AND avoidance of delivering false information without instruction to do so (telling a lie about Poe’s absence) with the added benefit that Finn’s mood would not be detrimentally altered (informing Finn that Poe appeared reluctant to visit)

As BB8 communicated to Finn that it will inform Poe that visitation was now allowed and that Finn wished to see the pilot the droid briefly ran queries as to what kind of reaction it should expect from its master when it completes its new task (for BB8 had every intention of doing what Finn had instructed, it wished to avoid deception) Luckily Finn’s understanding of binary and interpretation of droid emoting behaviours was still rather basic, and this level of consideration and concern was not picked up by the convalescing young man.

Their conversation easily moved on after Finn’s concern was put at rest, however temporarily, and the droid decided that some further lessons on binary was on the agenda. Finn would tell BB8 some new pieces of the language Magna had taught him, BB8 would attempt to correct any misinformation from the medic and then together they would practice Finn’s growing repertoire of words and phrases. They were content to carry on like this until Finn started to sag with exhaustion and his normally high level of comprehension and recollection started to slow.  
Finn bade BB8 farewell after he became too tired out to carry one and settled himself down into his bed with the intention to get a little sleep. He felt good, if not rather exhausted for having done nothing but talk to various people (and droids) all day, and his earlier anxiety about where exactly he stood with a certain Poe Dameron had been eased. But as he drifted off his mind rebelled against Finn’s sense of calm and just before he fully fell into a sleep cycle it presented him with a vivid memory, one that had been the basis of his fears about his friendship with Poe – for if the pilot was willing to throw away the life of the Stormtrooper who had risked so much to save him just so he could complete his mission, then who is Finn to assume that his life meant anything to Poe now that he wasn’t providing a useful service?

The physical sensation of being in the Special Forces TIE Fighter as Poe navigated it back towards Jakku overwhelmed Finn and the memory played out as he became entrapped in sleep:

> _“He’s a BB unit. One of a kind. Orange and white. Utterly unique and utterly invaluable”  
>  Finn’s voice rose anew. “I don’t care what colour it is! I don’t care if it’s capable of invisibility! No droid can be that important!”  
> Poe let out a private, knowing grunt. “This one is, pal”  
> “Okay,” Finn countered “you say that it’s important. I’ll tell you what’s important, **pal**. Getting as far away from the First Order and its representatives as we can, as fast as we can! That’s what’s important. To me, anyway” He lowered his voice. “I saved your life, Poe. At the very least, you owe me mine. We go back to Jakku, we die”  
>  “That’s a chance we’ve got to take” The pilot’s stance was unshakeable “This isn’t about my life, or yours. I’m sorry, Finn, but there are far greater thing at stake. Forces are in motion that must be dealt with. Unfortunately, I seem to be at the centre of them. It’s a responsibility I can’t – I won’t – forgo. I’m sorry you’ve become caught up in the middle of it, but I can’t do anything about that”  
> “I don’t care how important this droid of yours is, or what you and it are involved in. For you and me, Jakku is another word for death” _

Finn’s nightmares were distorted and formless that night, the sick feeling of his life and new found freedom being taken away from him mere moments after he had dared to take control for the first time and escape the First Order – his whole world up until that point – pervaded his dreams. Shapes that took no solid form surrounded him, bound him with invisible chains whilst a voice that should have brought comfort told him over and over that no one was going to take a chance on him, that nothing he could do would ensure his life, it wasn’t personal but Finn wasn’t worth it, wasn’t worth saving.

When he woke up Finn felt as physically and emotionally drained as he’d been back on Jakku, screaming into empty skies that he didn’t know what to do as the last of the TIE fighter parts scattered around him in the sand.  
He didn’t know what to do then and he didn’t know what to do now. He laid in his bed and wondered if this hopelessness wasn’t some indication that his life really wasn’t worth saving.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In where one chapter is only one scene long, General Organa comes for a visit and Finn get's introduced to someone new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual warning about my (possible) switching tenses; unlike Angela Carter I’m not doing it to be pretentious so I’ll be happy to correct any mistakes readers spot.  
> Also I am aware that there is a stupid amount of prose between any dialogues, I try not to do it but I guess I’m a sucker for being WAY too overly descriptive. Sorry.   
> Shangri-La has been used as the Stormtrooper theology because I’m terrible at making up names and didn’t trust myself to call the `trooper afterlife something totally idiotic. Suggestions on what to name it instead welcome!

Chapter four: 

 

It had been an otherwise normal day for Finn, until the moment General Organa marched into his hospital ward. Only three days prior Finn had been given the ok to get out of bed unassisted and walk around a little, with strict instructions on how far he was allowed to go and how often he was allowed to get out of bed (Dr Cam had stressed that it was to ensure he didn’t reverse any of his amazing physical recovery, Finn suspected the Resistance didn’t want him wondering around unsupervised) so the General was treated to the sight of the former Stormtrooper performing some stretches the physiotherapist had asked him to complete twice a day.

It had also been a week since he last saw BB8, and asked the droid to pass a message along to Poe for him, and Finn was starting to become anxious. He felt like his life had become more confined than it had ever been with the First Order, at least as a Stormtrooper he got to see more than one or two different rooms a day. He began to really press the medics and the doctors and any other Resistance personnel who came to talk to him in a professional capacity about offering any help he could give them. He didn’t care if they had him wiping down tables in the cafeteria or sweeping debris from the landing strip, Finn was itching to be put to work and to be useful to the Resistance in any way possible. At first he had simply wanted to start paying back for everything they had done for him after his encounter with Kylo Ren’s lightsaber, but now he was starting to stir crazy with all his inactivity and bed rest. Another part of Finn was desperate for them to give him work to do as some kind of sign that he wasn’t being treated as a prisoner. He wouldn’t blame the Resistance for wanting to keep him on lock down, but he’d rather they were straight with him about it – the uncertainty of his situation was causing a lot more anxiety on top of what Finn already had to deal with.

It seemed that his frequent insistence to staff that he was readying and willing to work had finally reached the ears of General Organa. The poor staff member who had informed the General thought they were lodging a complaint about constantly having to give Finn the brush off, but instead they had ended up getting an earful from the General about letting valuable information go to waste.

The General had intended to visit Finn at some point, she had wanted to do so shortly after he had regained consciousness from his coma but dealing with the aftermath of taking out the Star Destroyer and the First Orders subsequent attacks on civilian areas had consumed all of her time. Organising pilots to defend their allies and Resistance aid to those who had been targeted by the First Order, all whilst ensuring her people were safe and not followed back to the base or any other Resistance strong hold AND performing her normal duties meant that the days and turned into weeks and she had hardly even had time to get some sleep. Now work and personal interest collided and the Princess of a world long gone strode purposefully into Finn’s lonely hospital ward with datapads and starmaps in arm.   
As soon as Finn caught sight of the approaching General he snapped out of his stretches and stood to attention out of both habit and respect. This wasn’t the best thing for him to do, the sudden movement of standing up and getting his spine ridged and inspection ready, - and despite the replacement vertebrae and synthetic muscle and tendons expertly crafted into his ruined back from multiple surgeries – Finn was simply still not strong enough to do more than the most gentle of movements.

Finn tried to school his expression and stop the hiss of pain before the General heard but it was much harder to mask his aggravated injury when his legs suddenly gave way, causing him to topple to the side and grasp his bed for support.  
The General quickly dropped her items on one of the empty ward beds and hurried over to help him. 

“Finn! No, no – don’t try and stand up again. Get back on the bed and rest, for Force’s sake”

Finn hoped the shame he felt wasn’t showing on his face, he still wasn’t sure about how much someone could tell just from looking at him thanks to a life time of anonymity behind his helmet. One of the recommendations from the doctors was that he look at `emotion flashcards` to help with learning how to read expressions (and also help him develop coping strategies when it came to his moderate face blindness) When he wasn’t required for some tests and health checks, spending time in the therapy room or working at his physiotherapy, Finn would sit for hours flicking through pictures of various people pulling different faces and answering multiple choice questions on what he thought the expressions meant. Sometimes the faces would have names labelled next to them and he would have to scroll through several people before being shown a final image, asking him who he thought the person was, other times the pictures were just of a set of eyes or a mouth and he would have to judge what emotional that person was feeling just from that. Finn expected to hate those pictures but found he was more adept at telling if someone was happy, frustrated, shocked, disgusted or any other emotion with just a mouth or eyes to look at than the pictures of a whole face. He guessed this was a throwback to being in the First Order, where not everyone wore a mask that totally covered the face, but when all the elements were thrown together Finn felt his mind get overwhelmed. Most of the people’s faces were standard humanoid and each series of faces would have the same skin colour and be (or appear to be) of the same gender, this was to teach him how to read and remember similar faces, or so he was told.  
Sometimes Finn would copy the expressions he saw on the datapad screen, figuring that duplicating what he saw would trigger some kind of instinctual recognition, but most of the time he felt like a fool pulling faces to himself.

As the General helped ease him onto his bed and into a comfortable position Finn fought his natural urge to grimace with pain or wince in mortified embarrassment. The former `trooper tried to subtly analyse the General’s expression, expecting to see anger at his weakness or for her to have a resigned look of being fed up with him gracing her care worn but elegant face.  
Instead it looked to him like she was concerned, not about the fact that he was clearly a drain on her time and resources but more concerned _for him_ \- like it genuinely worried her that he was in pain and she was sad that he was suffering. Finn had already been in awe of the strong military mind she held and now he got a flutter of a warm feeling low down in his chest as she fussed over him with care; it was the same one he got when Rey offered him her hand to help him up on Jakku, the one he got when Chewie had thrown a massive arm around him and yodelled what he assumed was words of encouragement before they disembarked from the Millennium Falcon on the Star Destroyer, the very same warm bloom of positive feeling he got when Poe Dameron had offered to give him a real name. 

Leia smiled down at Finn once she’d gotten him settled on the bed, she looked tired and her eyes were tight around the edges but her smile seemed genuine if not still a little concerned.

“I’m sorry Finn, I should have had someone inform you ahead of time that I was going to come by today but I was in such a rush to meet with you. I’d offer to come back later but we really do need to discuss what kind of intel you have that can help the Resistance”   
She left his bedside for a moment, walked over to the empty bay where the datapads and starmaps lay temporarily abandoned during Finn’s tumble.  
“I’d like your input on the recent attacks from the First Order. You can probably guess that we’re stretched rather thin on the ground at the best of times, so if there’s any way you can help us prepare for what the First Order may do next or have any suggestion on how to minimise the damage they can do then I would love for you to assist my Intelligence Team”

Finn’s sigh of relief was not unexpected by the General, he had been offering his help for nearly as long as he had been awake from what the staff had told her. It was clear the young man was eager to assist them in any way he could and Leia was surprised that he had yet to be taken up on that considering the wealth of knowledge he would possess on ground manoeuvres and how instructions would be carried out from within the First Order. Not forgetting the skills he brought with him outside of holding valuable information on the First Order, she had seen first-hand his drive to complete a mission and his skills in combat.   
Of course what her staff didn’t know was that Finn had started to greatly doubt how welcome he was within the walls of the Resistance; whereas any other person who had done what he had would be heralded as a hero, complete with celebration and official recognition of their brave deeds, Finn was being treated like he was infected with a highly contagious disease and had been shut away without explanation. Leia was, quite frankly, more than a little angry at how several hospital bays were left empty in the ward surrounding Finn. It wasn’t like space was a luxury anywhere on base and leaving beds empty when they were receiving the wounded and the sick everyday was inexcusable.  
Leia may not have trained in the Force the same way as her brother but that didn’t mean she wasn’t just as sensitive as Luke. The fear and loneliness that rolled off of Finn was so palpable she wouldn’t be surprised if even the least Force sensitive being in the galaxy would be able to pick up on it. There was a suggestion of something else below the emotions, a thread of something deeper which told Leia that Finn was subconsciously projecting how he felt, like he was in hope that someone would sense his emotional state and come find him. Finn didn’t seem to realise that he was silently communicating through the threads of the Force and so the message of loneliness simply extended from him with no destination and no specific recipient, creating an air of sadness around the poor boy. Leia made a mental note to test Finn, to the best of her own abilities, for just how Force sensitive he was, but that was information she would have to shelve for later; right now they needed to focus on tactics for fighting the First Oder. 

“As much as I’d love for you to give me some insight into ground troop formations and tactics I don’t think showing you footage of the recent raids would do you any good, I don’t want to start you off on a panic attack”  
The General flicked through some of the reports she had with her until she pulled a couple out and handed them to Finn “But if you could have a look at these and tell me if you can use the information to predict where the next strikes may be the Resistance and its allies will even more in your debt”

Finn bit his lip and glanced at the tactical reports and sit reps in his hands.

“Ma’am, I think I could help you fend off a thousand attacks and still wouldn’t have made the ledger even between the Resistance and I. You’ve done so much for me already and I… I don’t think there’s any way I could ever repay what you’ve done. Even if my injuries hadn’t killed me straight away I would probably have been heading down a long, painful road to Shangri-La” Finn scanned the reports of the recent raids and felt a sickening pull at his stomach as he saw the numbers of civilians deaths totalled up “I’ll help you anyway I can, General, but I don’t want anyone in my debt or have anyone thank me. It’s not right what they’re doing, but those `troopers who get killed along the way don’t know any different – even completely believe that the lives they take and the families they tear apart are nothing compared to the Galactic good they’ve been told the Order stands for”

Leia gently placed a hand on Finn’s shoulder, she could only sympathise with what he was going through. Other than finding out about who her father really was (and how the boy she’s kissed, mainly out of spite, was in fact her brother) her life view had never been so utterly shattered and altered as Finn’s had. To her it was unimaginable to suddenly realise that your whole world was geared towards domination and corruption, so much so that slaughtering whole planets was simply a step towards a shared goal. Although, Leia supposed, watching her home planet be destroyed in front of her wasn’t any kind of traumatic experience to be sniffed at. She guessed maybe out of everyone in the Resistance she and Finn may in fact be two of a kind; everything she knew destroyed literally and his figuratively. 

“Finn, you never need to worry about paying back the care that we’ve given you. You are important, not just because what you’ve done and the lives you’ve saved but because you are a living being and every being deserves the chance to survive” 

Finn’s mouth screwed up like he’d just bitten into the flesh of a fruit and got a mouth full of sour when he’d been expecting sweet.

“But what about those who you kill? What about other Stormtroopers, or the pilots or… or... contractors working on star bases or on the ships? Don’t they deserve the same chances?”

The General took a moment to try and come up with a satisfactory response to questions that were clearly troubling him but Finn spoke up again shortly after.

“Sorry, I’m sorry General Organa. That was really outta line and I shouldn’t have said anything, I’m sorry. I just… I just keep thinking about…”

“About what would have happened if you’d never put down your blaster? Never left the First Order? Or do you keep thinking about your comrades and what has become of them? Maybe this was too much for you right now”   
Leia reached over to take back the reports but Finn placed a gentle hand on her wrist.

“No Ma’am, it’s fine. I can do this” He gave her a small smile and then gestured to the lone chair next to his bed “but I hope I’m not taking up too much of your time, I know how busy it must be for you right now”

Leia lowered herself into the orange plastic chair with a wince and thought to remind herself to bring a cushion or something to sit on next time, or maybe reach out and see if anyone could provide some more comfortable furnishings for the medi bay.

“Finn, you’ll be doing not only me but the whole Resistance a huge favour so I’m happy to give you all the time we need to do this. I’d be meaning to come visit for a while, as a social matter, so I’m just sorry the first time we get to talk properly is about military matters”

The General talked Finn through various points in the reports and the two of them talked tactics and manoeuvres and vantages till late into the evening. Once it got dark outside Leia called a stop and requested that dinner be brought over for the both of them. The break in the conversation brought them to a calm lull where neither of them spoke, nor felt the need to speak, for several long minuets. Leia studied the tired face of the young man, really still a boy to her, on the bed. He looked worn and surprisingly exhausted for someone who had to spend most of their time in bed. She wondered if the inactivity felt like some bizarre torture to him, it was hard to imagine the First Order allowing their troopers much time to rest at the end of a shift and she highly doubted any of them even knew such a thing as holiday leave existed. Leia considered asking for more regular updates on Finn’s recovery, as she got the feeling that getting cooped up all alone was hardly helping his mental health. She began thinking of what kind of stress free and non-strenuous jobs she could get Finn involved in once he was given the all clear to get up and about when something from the start of their conversation crossed her mind.

“Finn, you mentioned something called Shangri-La earlier, you talked about heading there after a life threatening injury. Is it a planet or a First Order base?” She wasn’t expecting an expression of scared guilt to flash across Finn’s face, nor the anxious look in his eyes even after he’d schooled his expression into something more neutral. “I’m sorry, I’ve just never heard of a place called Shangri-La before, and I thought I knew most of the central Galaxy’s planets” She smiled at Finn in the hope that it would calm him somewhat. If this place were a First Order stronghold or a code word for some other important location then it was worth while getting then information from him about it.

Finn drew a deep, steadying breath through his nose and tried his damndest to calm his nerves. He had been upset earlier and he hadn’t even realised he’d mentioned… That Place. It was something that belonged purely to Stormtroopers, you didn’t even mention it to anyone who ranked out of ground troops and normal garrisons; they may wear armour similar to a normal `trooper, but the moment they were give a red shoulder plate or coloured markings on the white of their armour they become something other, something better. They didn’t need The Place any more, they had been elevated above the rest in their living time so didn’t need reward after death.  
Death played a huge part in a Stormtrooper’s world; no one had ever seen an old `trooper, there was no `trooper retirement fund, no easy assignments for the guys and girls getting on in years with one too many historical injuries slowing them down. None of them really knew how old they were but many thought the end of their cadet training happened around the Standard age of 15, so it was a universally accepted fact that a Stormtrooper who lived past their 35th annual was either incredibly lucky or had somehow managed to shirk their work the whole time (which was impossible, they were raised to feel uneasy with inactivity)  
All that hard work had to earn them something in the end. They sure as hell don’t get given any credits to spend, and employee benefits are a totally foreign concept to the lower ranks of the First order. Working towards your death, totally loyal and true to the Order, would logically mean that anything they were due got given to them _after_ they shuffled off this mortal coil. 

 

“Shangri-La isn’t a place you can get to you can get to”

Leia quirked an eyebrow “Me specifically or do you mean no one is able to travel there for whatever reason?”

Finn stared down at his fingers as he worried a loose thread on the blanket, not entirely sure how to put it into words. Did people outside of the First Order believe in something like reward after death? He didn’t know an awful lot about the Force, but maybe that had something to do with it?

“No Ma’am, but um... also yes? Neither of us can go there right now, no one can, but the only people who do get to go to Shangri-La are Stormtroopers. ‘Troopers only get what they need to function and serve the First Order and they don’t really get much more than that, `troopers who get promoted into command and all the operational Officers get days off and nicer places to sleep, right? They get rewarded for their hard work with nice things. So standard Stormtroopers don’t really, um, earn anything, but we keep being told that everything we do is for a greater good and that we have to keep at it, so that’s gotta amount to something? Why would others get better food or care for their hard work, but not the `troopers? So it’s important that we work hard during life, so the reward for a normal grunt like me… like I _was_ would have to come _after_ that life” Finn felt like his face had been lit aflame or he’d gotten too close to Kylo Ren’s twice cursed lightsaber. 

A quiet `oh` escaped Leia’s lips “Earlier when you said you would have headed to Shangri-La, that meant you thought you would have died. So the First Order has come up with its own after life, huh?”

“No, not the Order, Stormtroopers. `Troopers have been around longer than the First Order anyhow, so it’s ours. Wait, not _ours_ I mean, I don’t know if I get to go there now. Not that I’m sure I really believed in it anyway, every wave of `troopers seemed to have their own theory on what Shangri-La is or means. You learn about it from a unit ahead of you, and then when there are some younger cadets in the same bunk house as you then you teach it to them”

Finn bit his tongue, it didn’t feel right to talk about it like this. You whispered about it to your bunkmates and swapped ideologies about it during quiet moments on a shift. You never spoke about it to anyone but your brother and sister Stormtroopers. Telling the General of the Resistance about Shangri-La felt like almost a big an act of treason as walking out on the First Order in the first place. 

Leia considered Finn for a moment, he was clearly trying to control the flood of expressions crossing his face and maintain an `at ease` type of body language but never had she seen such an anxious bundle of almost neurotic nerves for one so young. The General wanted so much to ask more questions about this fascinating new piece of information - who knew that Stormtroopers had developed their own ideological beliefs through generation after generation under the thumb of various factions fighting for galactic supremacy? – but the more Finn spoke on the subject the more visibly distressed he become. If the boy picked anxiously at the threads of his blanket anymore he’d end up with a lap full of lose fibres and nothing to keep him warm. 

Their dinners had finally arrived and Leia decided to drop the subject of ideas about the afterlife for the time being. Finn had looked so relived at the interruption and Leia simply didn’t have the heart to force him back onto a subject which very evidently made him uncomfortable just thinking about. She wondered for a moment if it was the subject of death that so disturbed him or if it was more to do with the company he was presently discussing it with.

It was time for a change of subject, perhaps getting to know more about how the former `trooper was getting on socially was a good idea?

“So tell me Finn, have you been having many visitors?” 

Finn winced, forkful of food half way up to his mouth frozen in the air.

So, apparently _not_ a good idea. Leia felt like she was trying to navigate a conversational asteroid field, blindfolded.

“Well Ma’am there’s one of the Medics, Magna, who comes by to see me most days. One of the Doctors likes to come by and talk, and not just about my recovery either. Um…”  
Finn trailed off as a small war of conflicting thoughts waged on in his mind. He shouldn’t tell anyone about BB-8 sneaking in, but he shouldn’t lie to his superior, but then BB-8 might get into some kind of trouble if he doesn’t, but he’s spent his whole life scared of the _terrible consequences_ of telling falsehoods to his betters.

“And I presume that little droid of Dameron’s has been making itself a nuisance with the staff as well? Or has BB gone back to their old ways of trying to creep in unnoticed?” Oh, Leia knew all about BB-8’s ways in and out of the different wards – when that little droid wanted to visit their friends, they just went ahead and did so. It had taken more than a few stern words from the Doctors, medical droids, Leia and finally Poe himself before BB-8 begrudgingly started to wait for permission to enter the wards.  
Plus, the droid had given the game away when they rolled up to her several days ago and demanded to know when Finn would be released “From captivity” (as BB-8 had put it) They said it was getting awful hard to teach him binary without having access to a computer terminal, and there were only so many items they could point to and beep the name of when stuck in a medi bay.   
It was BB’s little chat with her that caused the General to become so frustrated when she’d found out that Finn was essentially being hidden away. As far as she had known the young man was merely still recuperating and had been unable to do much more than rest, according the BB and the staff’s report this was not the case. Although Finn may not be back on top form, he was clearly ready and raring to go – willing to take on even the smallest of tasks and taking on learning a whole new language from BB-8. 

Leia observed Finn out of the corner of her eye before casually saying “I’m surprised BB has been sneaking in here, rather than just coming in with Poe when he comes to visit. Surely that would be easier?” She pushed the remainder of her food around the plate in a disinterested fashion to seem nonchalant but never once stopped watching Finn’s expression. She had suspected the flight Commander had stopped visiting Finn once the young man regained consciousness, but the fallout from destroying Starkiller base and the attacks the First Order had been orchestrating since then meant that becoming involved in the minutia of her staff’s lives outside of war was far from her top priority. In fact, _sleep_ hadn’t even been on the list of top priorities for the last few weeks. 

Finn seemed to deflate in on himself; his eyes darted too and fro around the room, avoiding landing on the General, his shoulders did not sag or slump forwards but instead they stiffened and drew in close, his head drooping down to meet them and his hand curled in together at his stomach. He looked like he was trying to condense his body down without outright curling up into a ball.

“He’s not been by, no one has really. I mean, outside of BB-8, Magna and maybe Dr Cam, I’ve not had any… ah… social visitors. But that’s… fine? I wasn’t expecting anyone. Before, in the Order, when you go to the infirmary you get treated and get out as soon as possible. Visitors would just delay that I guess”

Leia gave Finn a powerful look.

“I think you’re smart enough to know that it isn’t like that here. Although I wouldn’t blame you if you did feel like you were being kept away from social interaction. I’ve already had words with the ward manager about all these perfectly good, and perfectly _empty_ , beds”

“But I understand why they are Ma’am, the staff are just being careful”

“They were just being small minded more like. Nothing you’ve said or done since you sprung one of our own from a matter for certain death has given anyone any indication that you may be a danger. I’ve got the psych evaluations to back that up”

The General put the remains of her dinner to one side and leant forward to pull one of Finn’s hands away from his stomach in order to hold between her own.

“Finn, your home is with the Resistance for as long or as little as you want it to be. We owe you a great deal and if you can keep working with me, and my staff like you have done today we’ll continue to value and appreciate you. And if you chose to skip the planet as soon as you’re well enough? No one will hold it against you; in fact I would do as much as I could to make sure you get the life you’re looking for”

Finn chewed his lip for a moment “But it doesn’t matter”

“Finn, of course your life matters! I know the First Order…”

“But isn’t that was the Resistance thinks too? That someone dying is less important than carrying out your mission?”

Leia studied Finn’s face; he wasn’t needling her for a reaction like when they were talking about casualties of war earlier. His expression was earnest, if not a little distressed and confused.

“Who told you that? Was it someone here in medical?” 

“No, it was… nothing. Please don’t worry about it Ma’am”

Finn chewed his lower lip. Worrying it so much that he felt an explosion of coppery salt across his tongue as he caused his lip to start bleeding. Logically he knew it was something Poe had said in the heat of the moment, they had barely known each other long enough to steal a TIE fighter and after everything that happened between then and destroying Starkiller base Finn knew just how important it was that Poe find BB-8. Going back to Jakku had meant certain death to the escaping Stormtrooper and the pilot he’d saved told him his life didn’t matter, that the newly named Finn was as disposable as a broken blaster in a fire fight, in that moment Finn felt shocked to his core. He expected such blasé approaches to life from the First Order, he had grown up knowing if his deaths or the deaths of his brothers and sisters in arms would further a mission than they would lay down their lives and think nothing of it.   
But he had _only just_ gotten his freedom, and not just that but the pilot he’d risked everything to save (well, to commandeer into helping with his escape) had given him a proper name. Finn had been a good Stormtrooper, really good, but he’d never been liked by many others. He’d never been given a nickname, affectionately or as a tease, so to have the sweetness of a life of his own and a name to go with it suddenly ripped from him and to be told his life doesn’t matter – it had felt like a frozen dagger had been plunged into his chest.

_”There are greater things at stake”_ That’s what Poe had said and Finn understood that now, knew he would gladly give up his freedom and his life to save his friends and help the Resistance all over again. Not mindlessly and thinking that was all he was worth, like he would have for the First Order, but gladly and with love in his heart. Finn knew that any sacrifice he made now would potentially save others from harm; he would take a lightsaber to his spine again, would face a legion of his former Stormtrooper comrades, hell he may even willingly go back to Jakku, all in the name of saving his friends and helping the Resistance. 

The reasonable part of him knew that no one thought of him as an expendable tool to be used any more.

It’s just a shame that the reasonable part of him didn’t yell quite so loudly as the part that tells him the exact opposite, and not only that but the Resistance will want to get shot of him as soon as he proves to be of little use to their cause.  
That unreasonable part of him also likes to shout about how if his life really was of value and his standing here wasn’t just based on his usefulness, than why hadn’t Poe come to see him yet?

Finn had found the droid, worked with a future Jedi to get to the Resistance (although then failed to keep said Future Jedi out of the hands of the First Order), delivered the droid and the map safely and helped destroy the First Orders largest weapon against the galaxy. He had, as Poe said, completed his mission.   
So, mission over, job done and Finn was no longer useful to Poe. Why would the Commander need to bother himself anymore with a broken soldier raised by the enemy?

Sometimes Finn really hated the unreasonable part of himself. 

Sometimes Finn thought that unreasonable part made very persuasive arguments.

The General looked like she was gearing up to give Finn a pep talk, something he’d gotten from nearly all the people he’d been able to have conversations with since waking up, but she was interrupted by the sound of loud click-clacking on the cement floor of the ward.

The sound was preceding the arrival of a pale young woman carrying the largest datapad Finn had ever seen and wearing shoes with a heel and skinny, needle like heels so high his mind boggled at how someone was able to stand up in them, let alone walk along at a brisk pace.  
Finn was also struck by the sheer bored contempt on the woman’s face; he stared at her as she approached the General and not once did her eyes even flicker to him or her expression change. Finn had seen a child’s toy once that reminded him of this woman, it was a facsimile of a beautiful woman but its face was made of a cold, delicate material that had smashed into tiny white shards when its young owner dropped it. Cadet Stormtroopers didn’t have toys to play with as small children and Finn had found it odd for anyone to want to carry around a little version of a person and make pretend that it was alive; surely that was kind of… creepy?

The doll-like woman stopped smartly at the foot of his bed and promptly presented General Organa with the datapad.

“The decoded communication information you messaged to Comms and Intelligence earlier has already proved itself to be correct. Using the Unencrypted Channels Phrase Key Delta I set up an algorithm to scan transmissions outgoing from a suspected First Order sympathiser planet, I have compiled a report on three outgoing messages I believe contain coded information. Phrase Key Delta leads me to believe the subject matter is regarding a contract for weapons manufacturing”

She spoke like her words were from a textbook, and although she didn’t exactly talk in a monotone Finn struggled to pick up on any of the normal inflections one would hear in conversation. The General didn’t seem perturbed by the abrupt briefing from the new comer so he figured this must be normal behaviour, or at least normal for the woman in towering heels.

Leia took the offered datapad and scrolled through some of the information, from his position on the bed Finn could see sections of transmissions highlighted in various colours and some pop out boxes of the same colours to either side. He was at the wrong angle to be able to read anything properly but he got the impression the highlighted passages may have matched some of the key words and phrases he’d told the General the First Order was in the habit of using over unsecured lines. 

The General didn’t raise her eyes from the screen as she gestured between Finn and the woman with the cold expression. “Scarlet this is Finn; he’s the one who provided me with this information, and a lot more besides it, earlier. We were just stopping for a meal but seeing as how his efforts have already proved fruitful I think we can stop altogether for the evening, I’m going to need a couple hours to check over your findings”

Finn gave a tired smile and small wave, Scarlet glanced at him from the corner of her eye without even turning her head. He probably would have felt cowed by the vague disgust in her expression but he realised she hadn’t changed her expression at all since entering; even the General was subject to the woman’s look of contempt. 

“Finn once you’re recovered I’d like you to start working alongside Scarlet, she’s a Comms and Intel Officer and I think that line of work here will great benefit from your input. Plus, I think an Intelligence role would suit you – at least until you’re well enough to decide if you want a more physically demanding job with the Resistance”  
Leia paused and looked up at Finn “That is… if you want to stay with the Resistance, you’re free to go any time you want. I’d suggest waiting until you’re recovered before you make that choice” 

He couldn’t be sure, but Finn thought there was a slight teasing tone to the Generals words. Did she know he’d tried to ditch Rey, Han and Chewbacca for a life of menial labour and relative freedom? Could the General tell, just by looking at him, that he had nearly put his own best interests ahead of others?

For the first time since entering the room, the cold and calm expression on Scarlet’s face shifts. When she frowns Finn half expects her skin to crack and break, like the fragile porcelain it resembles.

“General, I don’t require an assistant or trainee or whatever else you’re proposing, I work by myself. I can suggest a number of other Officers who would be better suited to this”

“Scarlet, this is as much for you as it is for Finn and even more so for the benefit of the Resistance. Finn has knowledge that we don’t, it’s all well and good you being able to run programmes to highlight certain words or phrases but Finn can listen in on tapped communications as they happen and let us know immediately what the First Order is doing. This is no reflection on your work, you do an excellent job, but at some point you’re going to need to start integrating yourself. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to, but I need to work alongside Finn – professionally this will be a great thing for the Resistance and in your personal lives I think you two can help each other”

Finn raised his hand slightly, not wanting to interrupt the General but the conversation was starting to go over his head and he didn’t want to end up looking a fool but misinterpreting what was being said.

“Sorry General Leia, but what do you mean about the personal lives thing?”

Scarlet turned fully to face him and answered before the General could. “She thinks we need to be friends because we both came to the Resistance from the First Order, although I must disagree with this assessment as our backgrounds are far from similar. The General is under the impression that I `need to come out of my shell`, my interpretation is that I don’t like anyone ever and people are tiresome”   
With that Scarlet nodded curtly at Leia before dismissing herself and turning away sharply on her savage looking heels, the reverbing click-clack of her shoes somehow sounding angry.

Leia reached over and patted Finn’s hand before whispering conspiratorially “Scarlet likes to think she has me fooled, but I know that girl desperately wants to make friends here – she just doesn’t know how“

“And you think I can help with that? General, I didn’t even have friends in my unit back with the First Order and I grew up with them”

Finn was still trying to process what, exactly, was going on. He supposed it wasn’t unreasonable to assume other’s had left the First Order and joined the Resistance, although it seemed he was probably the first Stormtrooper, but he was kind of a mess so how would he be able to help someone who had defected and settled before he’d even had the notion to escape?

“Don’t play yourself down, Finn! You have a natural talent for winning people over and from what I’ve heard you don’t seem to have any difficulty inspiring a strong sense of loyalty and friendship in people, and droids – BB-8 isn’t always the easiest mech to strike up a friendship with”

Finn started to protest the General’s assessment of his social skills but stuttered to a halt at her `I am correct so don’t even bother to argue` look.  
Leia started to tidy up her datapads and starmaps, muttering quietly about how she never remembers to bring a damn bag to carry everything in, before standing and addressing Finn one last time.

“I know you’ve not been in the best situation during your stay here, that was a terrible oversight and I can’t apologise enough for some of my staff’s behaviour, but I truly want you to be happy and I’m far from the only one who feels that way” The General settled all her items, along with Scarlet’s larger datapad, in her arms and turned to walk away “And if you chose to stay, after your recovery, I want you to consider coming to me for some training. You have talents Finn, ones you never knew you had, and I want to help you fulfil your potential. Good evening Finn, I’ll come see you again soon”

She didn’t wait for Finn to try and figure out what the appropriate salute or response to a Resistance General’s farewell before she walked away from his bedside and out of the ward. 

Finn sat, quiet and contemplating; the muted sounds of a busy hospital coming in through the open doors of his lonely ward served as a reminder that life still went on outside of his little bubble. The General said the Resistance needed him, that he was a help and not a hindrance, she thought that he could even be more than just an asset in their battle against the First Order. For the first time in a long time Finn felt hopeful for his future, a sense of calm settled around him and the bubble of anxiety that had taken up residence in his stomach after that first mission on Jakku began to ease off.   
He smiled to himself and settled back into the pillows of his bed, and when an Orderly popped in to gather the plates left over from dinner Finn took the first steps in engaging them in conversation, rather than sticking to a quiet `Thank you` and avoidance of eye contact like he had been doing with anyone he wasn’t already familiar with.  
The Orderly stuck around and chatted amicably with him for a while and even seemed reluctant to cut their conversation off when they realised they needed to get back to work, they gave Finn a cheery wave as the left and called out that they would talk to him later.

Exhausted from a full afternoon and evening of not only working with the General but the intense emotional ride he’d gone through, Finn drifted straight into a deep, dreamless slumber.

BB-8’S loud BLAT work him up a few hours later, Finn wasn’t even mad at the little droid waking him up – he felt more rested than he had done for a while – and they got on with one of their (not exactly) covert late night binary lessons. Usually the droid let his human sleep, but they were excited by the addition of a datapad, compliments of General Leia herself, to assist in their lessons and BB-8 was too impatient to wait to play teacher. Finn laughed as the droid spun happily around his bed and natter away, too fast for him to properly interpret, things were starting to look up for him and he was more than happy to sacrifice a few hours rest in order to spend time with a friend.

The unreasonable part of him piped up just the once; if according to the General he was liked and wasn’t totally offensive to those in the Resistance, why was Poe still absent? If he really was able to make friends than he must have done something wrong to drive away the Resistance best pilot.

Finn wondered what it was he had done wrong.


End file.
